Renaka

A.I. Splash Def

Individual 5P Walling RetroBottle Defense, Desert 96x96 - by Touchpad_Master in 15 July 2005

Set up auto-defenses to hit your dummy Defilers such that they splash enemies running through.

A.I. SPLASH DEFENSE.scx

Levels: 15 // Stack: Yes // Walling: Safe // Note: read Mission Objectives for defenses listing
Award: Best of Class

The "AI" prefix in the series of mini-defenses came from the original Korean 개인 Lurker Defense map, in which the hangul means "individual", but transcodes to "ÀÎ" on non-Korean localizations. Traits that AI maps all share are the last-man-standing rule, individual tracks, and the characteristic boomerang pathing. In AI Splash Defense, the creator combined the strategy of splash defenses with the minimalism of AI defenses, and as such, walling is even more essential in keeping the enemy vulnerable to fire. AI maps are generally short games, but what makes them more fun than longer ones is the ability to quickly master your strategies to outplay others.

氷の華

5P Battle Dodge Obstacle, Ice 128x128 - by zzerg$$ in mid 2000s

Dodge erratic patterns of deadly projectiles as your blinking gunner barrages each level's boss unit.

Flower of Ice.scx

Levels: 12 // Lives: 20, +13 buyable per level to self-revive // Features: Music, Ban
Award: Practical Innovation

It was by serendipity that I came across this rather unique Korean map while browsing the English staredit.net database. Comparable to the hardest bound maps, Flower of Ice adds the excitement of shooting games to the intensity of dodging gameplay. Basically the Flower series is an adaptation of the bullet hell style shooting games, and not being a misnomer, player-controlled ships must dodge rains of instant-kill bullets while strafing the level's boss unit. To adapt the shooting aspect to StarCraft, the creator split the player's "ship" to a dodger (Ling) and a gunner (air unit); the player controls the Ling, while an anti-air unit is constantly created and removed near the Ling to simulate a variable-rate shooter. As it is a challenging game, players will have to practice and replay the map several times to really enjoy its complexity.

Gunner  Rate      Damage  Special
KulM    VeryFast   60+8   destroy all bullets
Alan    Slow      124+26  four Alans attack once
FenD    Medium    111+13  +1 life
Dani    Medium     91+8   -1 life +1 upgrade

Where are the new SCMOTDs? What kind of daily program takes weeks to update? Who is responsible for this sporadic mess? Why are there so many Korean maps? When are we going to see some <maps from your favorite genre>? To answer some of these theoretically asked questions (since no one gave me feedback about the program), I redirect you to these two prior posts, which in summary say that writing SCMOTDs takes a long time and that I'm also occupied with maintaining Nova's Ark. To the grateful and curious users of the archive and readers of the SCMOTDs, I write to you its memoir.

Jointly in maintenance, the SCMOTD program was planned to last throughout summer and ending in August, culminating with added commentaries for each map. Haphazardly, I was reluctant to post the closing statement until I had finished writing all the commentaries, which has proven to be almost as time consuming as writing the SCMOTDs themselves with me being a very slow writer. Regardless, I will continue to finish commentating, but you can be sure that there will not be as many SCMOTD frequently featuring as before, because August is a holder month for the future months in which I should will be too busy to play and write. But don't be too disappointed, since you yourself would be too productively busy to play StarCraft out of summer, right?

Regarding the new commentary feature, this is where I give personal and subjective reviews that hopefully will help readers respect the effort put into these gems. As an avid egosurfer for my own maps, I know what joy it is to see one's hard work being displayed and appreciated by others—it means that all those hours fiddling in the Campaign Editor provided many more hours of fun to those who played. Since each map featured has diverse merits along with its funness requirement, I grant them one of five awards, which basically are excellence in: functionality, creativity, popularity, or longevity, and maps that are "just good" are awarded as my favorite. For those who wonder why I do not rate maps as in a 1-10 points system, it is because every map featured is indeed a good map, and having rankings assigned will make readers weigh one map over another—an unwanted competition that I avoid also by featuring a map of different genre every day.

Looking back at my time selecting and playtesting maps, it has become a learning experience since I am a fastidious UMS player—playing mostly in the Custom, Defense, Control, and RPG categories (that's why you see more of them). Because I knew the SCMOTD audience is people looking for UMS maps in general, I had to widen my scope to appeal to everyone. More than that, I wanted the readers to learn of the diversity of battle.net maps and what they have been missing, and after playing the foreign categories like Conquest, Tug, and Warrior, I indeed know what entertaining games I've been missing. Concerning the genres which have not been featured, it is either that they have no worthy specimen, or just that they are yet to be featured.

On the topic of battle.net maps, Nova's Ark is the parent of the SCMOTD program, as it being the quantity to which SCMOTD complements with quality. Currently in my hard drive there are more than 25000 maps, over 10000 of which are included in the archive and map packs. At its beginning, there was about 6000 maps, but with the gathering from numerous StarCraft fansites and several large databases, it has grown to this huge magnitude that requires a daunting amount of time to categorize and quality-check. But since the SCMOTD program had become routine with more people reading it, I focused on maintaining specific genres and series that are popular instead and answering map requests if there need be. Still, I am inquisitive about what the readers prefer: more improvement to the archive or more SCMOTD to be featured?

Closing this memoir, I'm proud to say that the SCMOTDs exceeds the number of Blizzard's own (101 in their map pack) colorful, Map of the Week program. As a grand scheme, I wish those coming to Nova's Ark to be enlightened or enthused about battle.net UMS such that they will cultivate the diversity of StarCraft maps onto its promising sequel.