EPTWith the amount of time people tend to spend into researching maps nowadays they get solved in a finite amount of time and bring the play on those maps to a sort of stagnation. While it's still an entertaining watch, we mostly see how players prepare for their games instead of in-game thinking (although you can't do without it completely ofc). However, the other option of throwing the players into the depths of a completely unknown map right at the league is largely unexplored mostly because once it becomes known, mapmakers need to make another one.
Theoretically, matching players on unknown maps would reveal another, completely different StarCraft where the dominating players would be those who have more overall experience and understanding of the game than those who study every crevice on a given map. I'm not saying it's better because of course it's impossible to devise a really well-thought-out build on a map you don't know, but it's quite different, and therefore, might hold additional spectator value. It's a very special feeling when you know that players make their decisions completely in real-time, relying only on knowledge of the races and their instincts.
In SC and mostly in RTS'es, random map generation is something unheard of (while it's a common feature in TBS games, only one new RTS in development whose name I fail to recall has this feature). For SC in particular there were several reasons:
1) SC was initially made with Pentium 90-based CPU as minimum required specification. While it ran on slower systems (I played on P-60 without any side effects), map generation even on P-90 might be unaffordable because of the computational limitations.
2) SC had a hacky pathfinding engine (for the same computational reason, it's a miracle pathfinding even works in that game) that sometimes required non-logical (impossible to predict beforehand) fine-tuning impossible to implement in random maps.
3) Competetive play was a dormant phenomenon back then at 1998. Noone in the world understood what made a playable map, let alone a decent one. Ramped mains, natural expansions - all these concepts are inherent for SC2 mapmaking, but take a look at some maps SC originally shipped with and you'll get the picture.
4) Sprite-based engine with arbitrary tile passability makes pathfinding analysis somewhat too special case-dependent to be reliably implemented.
Now all these problems don't exist for SC2. We all have good computers that generate Mandelbrot fractals in a matter of milliseconds and a very flexible game engine with industry-standard (instead of home-made) pathfinding algoritms.
I'm perfectly sure that implementing random map generation in SC2 is possible. Imo, the best way to do it would be making a node graph with varying amount of detail. An example meta-algorithm:
1) Roll 2, 3 or 4 as a random number of starting positions.
2) Roll map size, anything but 2 players requires the dimensions to be equal.
3) Cut the middle part and randomly put a start position node in the outer part.
4) Put other start position nodes with regard to symmetry.
5) Decide on a basic pathfinding pattern (RH3-like circular, Python-like open middle, islands etc).
6) Put 5-8 basic pathing nodes that connect the starting positions to each other.
7) Assign properties to nodes like "high ground" and "has a mining spot".
8) Add detail to the node structure. Add pathfinding artifacts (backdoors).
9) Assign additional properties to the newly added nodes - "ramp", "high grass", "destructible rocks", "yet another expansion" etc.
10) Grow terrain around the final node graph. Apply decor. Spawn critters.
It's logical to add minimap markers for starting positions to alleviate the initial scouting luck. In fact, replay distributing would not be in any way hindered because it's not the whole map but only the random seed that needs to be stored in a replay for re-generation at watching time. And a random seed is just a number.
While in reality it is not nearly that simple as I've described, it's doable. The question is: would you enjoy playing on random maps and would you enjoy watching people play on random maps? I want a discussion here.
