[I] MM Success Stories

My name is Mark and here's the story of my life. It all started about 10 years ago, I was hanging out with my best friend named Jim at school. We were in the 8th grade and loving life. Everyday after school I would go over to Jim's house and me and him would brainstorm ideas that would make super awesome brood war maps. We'd each have our notebooks and we'd draw out different designs in them and then every week we'd switch notebooks and then we'd expand each others thoughts. Pretty much we were both creating lots of cool ideas for maps playing off each others works.

I would wake up at 6am, get ready, leave for school at 7am, get out of school at 3pm, head over to Jimmy's by 4pm and we'd draw in our notebooks or sit on his computer making maps til about 10pm (sometimes even later) where I'd then go home and go to bed, only to start the day all over again.

This went on for about a year, we each had notebooks full of designs. Unfortunately all these designs we did, when we actually tried to do them into the Brood War map editor, they would always turn out like crap. We just had too many unique and interesting ideas that the Brood War engine just wouldn't handle it. Eventually 8th grade ended and we were moving onto high school. Being freshmen was a scary thought but it was also very intriguing. Jimmy ending up giving up on mapping mainly because all the ideas we thought of, we didn't have the ability to create. He went on to join the football team at our high school. I was still very much into computers so I just stuck around, drawing maps and doing my own thing. Jimmy gave me his notebook with map designs saying that it was our hard work and that even though he was taking a new step in life, he wanted me to keep the things that were closest to us. It brought a smile to my face because for the past year these notebooks were our most prized possessions. I would keep it safe!

Another year passed by where I would do almost nothing but think of map designs. I even picked up Hammer Editor to mess around with level design on certain computer games like Half Life, Day of Defeat and Counter Strike. Jimmy basically did a 180 and was now a football jock. We didn't talk as much anymore because he was too busy with football practice and hanging out with his new friends. The few times I would try to hang out with Jimmy it never ended well. Either he would get too busy and couldn't hang out, or he would just completely change the subject, not wanting to talk about maps at all.

More years went by and me and Jimmy almost never talked at all. We grew apart so much and to me it was a little sad because he was my best friend for such a long time, but unfortunately he was too caught up in his own life that he didn't seem to care at all. During our Senior year of High School I decided to track Jimmy down in class and show him this new map design I was working on. At this point in my life I had about 10 notebooks full of map designs. As I reached into my bag to pull out a notebook Jimmy asked me if all those notebooks were full of maps. I told him yes, he proceeded to grab some of the notebooks out of my bag and throw them around the hallway, telling me I should "Grow up" in the process. Other kids picked them up, ripped pages out and soon I was the "freak" of high school. I was pissed off that Jimmy turned into such a gigantic prick, but also sad because a lot of my hard work that I created in these notebooks were now being torn, stomped on and thrown around all over the hallway.

Senior year was ending and people were passing their yearbooks around to get them signed. I basically handed my yearbook to one of my newer friends and he passed it down a line of people and everybody started to sign it. Even Jimmy! Unfortunately I didn't care what he would write so when I finally got my yearbook back to me I ended up doing a quick scan through it, then closing it, not even bothering to find what Jimmy wrote.

3 years later, starcraft 2 has been out for a bit now. I've been extremely pumped up about this game because Brood war was my life for most of middle school and the beginning of high school. I started to get really good at working with the Map Editor. Throwing up maps left and right, none of them getting very popular but still it was enjoyable to me. I haven't heard from Jimmy since high school. Not really paying much attention to him. I heard he went to some smaller college to join their football team. Ended up getting kicked off the team due to poor grades. Then dropping out of college all together. My life wasn't much better, working a full time job at my father's furniture store.

Out of the blue as I'm checking my email I see the Subject line say "You've received a message from Jimm...."

I was shocked, I got a facebook message from jimmy? I quickly opened up only to have my jaw drop to the floor. The full subject line read "You've received a message from Jimmy (I've left out the last name here)'s funeral page" Jimmy apparently died in a car accident. I decided to give his parents a call to get some more of the information. After a long while talking to his mother I've come to learn Jimmy hit a low spot in College, after getting kicked off the football team he started to get heavily into drugs. He eventually stopped going to class all together and stop contact with a lot of his closer friends. He was driving alone one night, most likely under the influence and crashed his car. Luckily nobody else was injured.

As mad as I was at Jimmy when we were in High School he was still one of my best friends then. I wanted to make one more starcraft 2 map in his honor. I thought up so many ideas and spent days tweaking certain maps. For the longest time I kept finishing maps but never thought they were good enough, neither did a lot of people when I posted those certain maps on a site called Team Liquid.

Sitting around one night, getting a little buzz on from the Jack Daniels I was drinking, I was on my computer, obviously working on my map dedicated to Jimmy. The ideas I had planned just weren't working out at all, I ended up throwing my shot glass against the wall, shattering it into pieces. The instant it happened, I knew how much of a dumbass I was. I instantly stood up and went to get a broom to clean it up. While cleaning up the broken shards of glass I noticed something...my yearbook.

I never actually found what Jimmy wrote in my yearbook, if anything at all, but I thought now is the time, let's have a look. Scanning page after page I eventually came across a longer paragraph...

"Mark, I know we had a falling out these past few years but I still consider you one of my best friends on earth. You will go far in life and I hope one day I'll be able to win your friendship back." -Jim

Tears filled my eyes. I just started balling and I couldn't control myself. Part of it the alcohol, part of it Jimmy passing away recently. Suddenly, a lightbulb went off in my head. I looked around in my room for about 15 minutes until I found our notebooks. The same notebook me and Jimmy worked on together all the way back in 8th grade. The one he gave me our freshmen year of high school. The one he told me to keep safe. I worked my ass off that night, struggling hard to complete a map using our ideas that I thought was good enough to dedicate to my friend Jimmy.

Nights turned to Days, Days to Weeks, Weeks to Months. Eventually, it was done. My map that was going to be dedicated to my best friend. I wasn't sure how big the map was going to become. I just hoped that maybe I would have one pro player play on it. Unfortunately the hardest part for me was the naming process, It had to be something that when I heard it I would always remember Jimmy.

Eventually I figured the name out, I finished up the doodads, the pathing, the lighting, everything about the map was done. I loaded up team liquid, ready to post my map and keeping my fingers crossed that it would do well. A tear ran down my cheek as I was ready to hit the submit button on the mapping forum.

"Jimmy" I thought to myself "I love you bro, you're in heaven now........the Cloud Kingdom........"

Note: Dont do drugs kiddies.