Hello, recently I've decided to make a movie map in the StarCraft editor. Most movie maps go for a comedic approach, but I have decided to go for a more serious, maybe nonsensical movie. I've already begun production of this amazing map and have already completed 20 seconds worth of gameplay time. Today I'm going to tell you about the development process that has gone on so far and the creative choices and direction I used in the production of the movie map.

Development began when I had an idea for a story to write about. I thought this could go pretty well in StarCraft form and I'm thinking of new ways to reinvent myself to spend time. I stopped playing melee regularly and I created another map which is just pure genius and has great attention to detail and the creation of this map came shortly before I got the idea of a story plot. I thought I could again reinvent myself by creating this movie map.

To give you a glimpse of what my other map was, it's unconventional in the traditional sense of a game. It's titled "The Psych Lobby" and the game name I type in is "Ask for advice here." I've always wanted to give people advice, bad or not so I made this map. The whole entire game takes place in the lobby, so I never start the countdown timer. There are a maximum of 4 tabs that you can name. They're titled The Pysch, Reclining Chair, Couch, and Waiting Room. I only open up one slot in the waiting room and when people come in, they pay an imaginary fifty cents, enter my office choosing either the reclining chair or the couch and I give them some advice on whatever topic they choose to bring up. It's also a bit of a roleplay for me. All in all, the map took me one minute to create yet so many hours have been sunk into it.

The use of applying ideas in StarCraft map form wanted to make me create a movie map, the mapmaking platform was good, versatile, and it was a way to feel close to StarCraft without playing StarCraft. I went through a couple of steps to make the idea come to life.

First, I wrote down the basic outline, key plot elements and scenes and a general series of events and tone/mood of dialogue. Other than that, the basic foundation was set.

At first, going about creating maps you don't know where to begin so I just looked at some other StarCraft movie maps and got a good idea how they made a continuous series of dialogue occur without any stopping and creating certain "special effects." You could get creative with them. I already had an idea for the opening but I had a lack of know-how to carry out the vision and apply it to reality.

I also wanted to manipulate the sound effects and make it a whole experience on its own. I downloaded Audacity to record generic sound samples like door opening or rain falling and some bits of music if I have any in mind.

With the starcraft editor you set triggers which have conditions which then cause actions and you can use these in combination to carry out cool gameplay elements. A trigger starts with a condition and then an action and you will apply it to a particular player or group (Player 1, 2, Force 1, Force 2, etc.)

For my first trigger I made a sequence which begins with a condition. A condition will have to be met or fulfilled in order for an action to take place, it needs to be triggered hence the name trigger, I'm assuming. The condition I set is "Always" which is cryptic to me but the Always condition is fulfilled when the game has started. It only shows once and it's not permanent unless you tinker with some other things.

Here is the sequence: Condition:Always, Action: Show red text to player, wait 4 seconds, play FallingRain.wav file, show more text, wait 4 seconds. Set switch 1. Setting the switch will then begin the next scene and a condition for your next trigger can be "Switch 1 set" and you can link the scenes this way in a continuous manner. A switch in itself was hard to grasp for me and somewhat abstract but it's like a light switch really to link a trigger to another trigger.

I set the text and made sure to have it stay on the screen long enough so it gives time for the player to read. 4 seconds is usually good enough most of the time. I recorded some sound of rain from a Youtube video, put that into Audacity and applied the fade out effect so the sound of the rain slowly dissipates over time. I timed out the time it would take to read the text and I wanted to make sure the rain sound would fade out 3-4 seconds after the player was done reading the opening text. The rain goes on for 15 seconds, the time it takes to read the text is 11 seconds. I also want to make sure there's a wait period between when the rain sound ends and when the next scene begins.

The end product is an amazing twenty seconds of gameplay, possibly even less if you're a fast reader. Thanks for reading.


Edit:I GIVE UP.