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Think back 4 years ago...think of all the changes in terrain. Back in the day GUEdit was the biggest thing, now we have SCMDraft, Starforge. Think of all the changes we have made too bnet. 4 years ago did you imagen this is what bnet would be like today? ...I sure as hell didn't.. Map Making has changed so much lately it just doesn't seem like its really map making anymore. It's nothing but mods and hacks. It's crazy, and people think its boring without these but back then we didn't even put our name on the maps we made. What do you think about old time too new time on starcraft? Has it changed for the better or the worst? ...You tell me...

- Please leave this topic for only the experienced map makers, not ones that joined bnet 1-3 years ago. Im talking too the old school map makers that have seen it all..

Your right, I can picture four and a half years ago, when I started playing sc, I could not have pictured what we have today for terrain. I think that things have changed for the better in the aspect of what maps have in them, but I have to say that I liked the openess utter simplicity of the old maps. Now everything is jam packed with so many new "stuff".

I remember the original isometric bounds.

I remember using ISOM to make square terrain maps, it was a pain, but then the maps had more effort in them

I remember not knowing how to do the 'extremely awesome out of reach squared terrain' or knowing what the hell SCXE even was. Back when Matrix's were cool, I took the old Matrix 4 Way 3 Race and used the map for my own map, because I had no idea how else to make squared terrain.

I joined b.net about 4 years ago, but didn't start ampping until about 2½ years ago. It was a lot different back then, though. RPG's were all different (Not the same Halo, LOTR, or Resident Evil RPG; which is just about everything out there) and the squared terrain / stacked units was amazingly difficult to learn.

Those were the good days.

When I had a 128x128 map that I wanted to covor with a certain tile, but with GUEdit's 1x1 square set-up and my uberly slow eMachines, it took an hour to covor up a 20x20 square of terrain.

I remember ISOM and i was like square terrain wtf????

then i remember GUEdit i had a friend teach me how too work it..and so much lag it was crazy

Back in the day when you screamed "hacker!!!" at the sight of a building in the water/on a cliff etc. Back when people still used blue text. Back when "kitten-killing" waterfalls were scoffed at. Back when people used beacons to move across water in badlands because the bridge sucked.

Ah, those were the days.

Man, i remember the good 'old days. Back when SC first came on Battle.net i was amazed, i had tried SC out for the first time on the internet. It was back when people didnt winbot and people were just happy do get second place in game. I personally do not like the fact at how far terrain has come. I mean, sure it looks a lot better, but people spend so much time on their terrain that the triggers (and pretty much the map) turn out shitty. Thats why i wish we could go back to the good ol days ( i got SC in 1999)

Ah, the good ol' days of Starcraft.

I remember when I joined B.net at about '99, I had the game since it first came out but I didn't bother to go online until '99. It was so much fun just playing the comps at home.

Anyways, back to B.net. I remember that there was only 1 server and then they made a big split up.

Anyways now to Terrain.

back in the day, if your map looked like a Blizzard map then it was good. If you had proper dodoads placement and varitey in your terrain then it was good. Basicly if your map was similar looking to those in the Blizzard Campaigns then it was good.

When ISOM first came out way back like 2000 or 2001 it didn't appeal to everyone and I wasn't one of those at first. I don't remember which map was it, I think it was the Turret Defense map by Ghost[yoon] and some other guy names Bolt_Head7 or Gear_Head7. Anyawys, I opened my map in StarEdit(Yes I still used that) and saw the terrain. I asked some dudes at B.net and they told me ISOM. I downloaded it and it was a pain to use and it took a long time so I ditched it. I kept doing maps in SCXE until I heard about SCMDraft 1. I used it, was buggy as hell and went back to SCXE. Then I found SEN back in early 2004(I didn't Log on until Summer 2004) and started using SCMDraft 2 and Starforge.
Making Terrain was similar to the ISOM days back in Summer 2004. You only had regular terrain for RPG's and square terrain in Bounds and the such. Then one day Extended Terrain was born.

Dabbu(To me greatest mapmaker), made a thread back in July 2004 with long bridges and he used the tiles of a bridge to make a dock in jungle terrain. He made all these thigns that were neevr dreamed of posible. Now terrain was no longer good doodad placement and variety in your terrain but it became an art. You could manipulate almost anything and we staretd to see very high cliffs, short/wide/long/short bridges. And things liek that. Big ramps, ramps that had a corner stuff liek that.

Then Yoshi impressed us all with the Matrix and his buildings.
Then silent came againg as no big advancement was made.
Small advancements came around and big structures were made like a big Temple and High Dirt blendings and the likes.

The Deathknight made the first waterfall and no one expected that. Everyone was so amazed about that, and everyone made waterfalls. THen the Terrain Forum at SEN was born. Lots of pieces of terrain were made including beatiful pieces of art found at the Hall of Fame. qPirateKing had made some excellent Terrain blendings in his map Legacy of Hean(Around August 2004) and in Deep Blue(Early 2005) and people started making things which were neevr dreamed posible.

Now you can do anythign you like with Terrain, all you need is Starforge or SCMDraft and some imagination.

In conclusion, no back in the day we would've never thinked about making pieces of terrain like those found today. I also believe that no further big advances on terrain liek ISOM and Starforge and SCMDraft have been won't be seen in the terrain sector. That is becasue Starcraft makes it's maps with tiles and we can place any tile anywhere without restriction.
The only way to make an even bigger advancement is to break the tiles themselves and this is imposible withotu modding.

been playing sc since like 1998 or somewhere around there. to tell you the truth, i do not remember anything cuz i quit for a few years

ive been playing since it came out which is about all my life and i remember when it was patch 1.04b. i also remember the isomic bounds like beer bound or something like that. lmao, the good ole days were awsome.

Funny thing is, I made the first extended ramp in GUEdit a long time ago. I just never released the map.

i started liek when i was 8(5 years ago). i sucked so bad lol. but i palyed single player. i went on B.net aroudn 10, and there were almsto NO square tiles maps. there were defenses, and bounds(oh shoot, bounds were big at that time!). any others like, RPGs, didnt have it at all.

i dont think there was a diplo back then(world maps)

I'm not so sure...I think people will always be making the next best thing. The tools to create things such as deathknight's waterfall have been around for years, but no one has accomplished something so impressive until relatively recently. It may be true that no future program can do something that Starforge or SCMDraft or maybe even GUEdit can't already do in the way of terrain - but that doesn't mean that there aren't better ways to do the same things. But more important than the ability of the program is the imagination of the mapper. It's only a matter of time before someone makes something as revolutionary as the first waterfall.

I never got to see this "golden age", I was still cheating my way through the normal campaigns, and I didn't have an online connection/any idea of what the internet was. Now, this was probably around '98. I think I made some maps, but only ones where the enemy had a buncha zerglings and I had about a hundred ultras, guardians, lurkers... I made one horrible map in early '04, then I went and played other games for awhile. However, I started experimenting with modding, and eventually came across SCXE, and this site. Still... from what I've heard... people on B.net back then where as stupid as they where now, except they didn't have maphacks. I remember when I first saw square terrain, and frankly, I wasn't too impressed. I remember using ISOM. Horrible experience.

What im trying too figure out is who the hell started the warring crap. Imean whats the point, all the old school bnet members all made maps. I feel it is completely stupid to "hack" people, especially on starcraft.

!!!IT'S A GAME!!!

For the casual starcraft player, well there just idiotic these days. Looking for special hacks too inhance there melee skills, or too mass load a clan. The years of the start of bnet too 02 were the best years. It was completely peace ful. Now and days its like the apocalypse of newbs who think there awsome cuz they can flood or something. Too me starcraft is all about creating your own little campaigns, i feel this game is for kids who want too grow up and be some sort of game designer. Too me this is my first step in a great career. For the rest of bnet, there just little geeks that sit and chat all day...

bnet was alot nicer when SC first launched, we would play 2v2 all night and have a nice time, no hackers or rarely, barely any flames, etc...

and then...

THE ATACK OF THE NEWBS!!

Ya it definatly 'feels' a lot different. Everynow and then I take a look back on maps I started when I first started starcraft. I looked at one and laughed because I had three enemy computers so I could have bad guy units from every race lol. But ya, things are so complicated now and mapping isn't so welcoming and nice as it was when I first picked it up. Or thats at least how I feel.

It's the demand for innovation among the elitists and the call for ease and flashy effects from the newbs. It's the popular demand tearing ideas apart, stopping the creation of potentionally good maps. People demand more then they used to. But I make maps for myself anyways... I don't care if anyone likes them or not...

Yea, mapping has become a lot more complex that it used to be. I started mapping after I saw those simple RPGs like True DII where the terrain was simple and the triggers mainly consisted of nothing but the spell triggers. When a noob sees something like that, it encourages them to open up an editor and give it a shot themselves. However, when they find that the maps they have are all protected or impossible to do with a normal editor, they don't give mapping a second thought. The complexity of maps in terms of triggers and terrain have made additional editors a requirement, and this is a problem for prospective noobs. Few of them even know that extra editors exist! And even if they do stumble upon a forum like this one, they often get sucked into doing things over their heads (like waterfalls) instead of focusing on learning all the fundamentals. All the innovations have alienated the entry-level mappers and I fear that without a source of new blood, mapping will die out.

Word to that man...
Actually that might be one reason sen is dying out...

Well I for one try to spread mapping as much as I can. When people join my maps and notice me and ask me about mapping I tell them that it's easy and they should try it and I direct them to SEN. But it is inevitable that mapping will die out eventually...tear*

SEN is dying out?? 36 new members joined in the last 2 days. People have been talking like it's the end of the line for Starcraft for years. Thanks to the hard work of the administrators (if they'd quit leaving ) I think SEN will be around for a long time to come.

i think starcraft has changed for the better cause now its like you can play melee or whatever, or you can play ums wich it becomes like a whole nother game, i like it...

i remember accidently stumbling across ums maps in like 00 or 99 i think, i played hydra ranchers and was like wtf is this? this isnt starcraft!... i didnt go on starcraft for a long time after that then i searched for starcraft maps online and came across xtra, i thought it owned, then i got the very very glitchy scmdraft 1 beta, used it like crazy, accidently found the tileset indexed and just played around with doodads making cool crap like installation green tank doodads that were half broken that now that i think of it looked really crappy... i also remember the simple yet complexed 7 tricks map, at the same time as the matrix bullet time (not version 12.89 or anything, JUST bullet time)

i like how because of all the stuff we can do now theres more maps and better games, but i wish ppl played old school maps more, like matrix bullet time or the first stacked cannons defence...

I think the new patch canceled out the stacking trick. It also canceled out a bunch of others like floating templar/drone.