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Wednesday 5 August 2009

SCMOTD #112 - Team Micro Melee

Team Micro Melee

1+2:1+2 Melee Squad Micro, Jungle 128x128 - by Bill307, IntoTheWow in 14 March 2009
Defend your army builder while assaulting the enemy base with various tactical points-earned squads.
Team Micro Melee AG 2.3.scx
Download StarCraft Map: Team Micro Melee, Team Micro Arena
1 Baser 2 Microers per team // Respawn: 10s // Note: numbers in units' names represent their kill points
Features: MoveableSpawnPoint, ConvertPointsToResource, GiveMenToMicroers; Suicide, Upg, Heroes

Award: People's Choice

Belonging to the established Builders and Fighters genre, Team Micro Melee combines regular 1v1 melee with numerous pick-and-choose squads for dynamic gameplay. With the experience-points element, supporting members can advance to stronger units and better upgrades to help protect the builder or lead the assault. As a team game, communication is vital or else a player will have to futilely fend for himself. A couple of mistakes builders usually make are not wisely positioning their squad-spawner (Civ) and not simply entrusting his army to the squads (PsiEm), which are important features to this tactics-focused game.

Tuesday 4 August 2009

SCMOTD #111 - AI Splash Defense

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
Download StarCraft Map: AI Splash Defense, AI Splash Defence
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.

Monday 3 August 2009

SCMOTD #110 - Bomber Probe

BOMBER PROBE

7P Probe Jail Tag, Jungle 128x128 - by EL-DUD in early 2000s
Warp in Pylon timebombs along with your vulnerable allies to wipe out lethal wandering enemies.
BOMBER PROBE!! V2.0.scm
Download StarCraft Map: Bomber Probe SC, BomberProbe SC, Bomberman, Bomber Man
Levels: 9 // Ban: Host // Tip: to limit friendly fire, don't build Pylons at (+) intersections
Award: Personal Favorite

Most of the quality Bomberman maps are FFA style with quick-thinking gameplay, such as BOMBERMAN 2.7 by [Ghost]Yoon. I chose BOMBER PROBE as the representative of this emulative genre in that it combines the fun of Bomberman games with the familiarity of tag maps. On first play, the map appears to be a Cat & Mice game with the jail zone in the center, and Mice/Probes running away from danger—except that players now have the more powerful ability of blasting away numerous enemies in entire rows or columns. Being the exact opposite of FFA maps, teamwork and especially the avoidance of friendly fire, will be needed as bombers advance through the nine diverse levels.

Sunday 2 August 2009

SCMOTD #109 - Flower Series

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
Download StarCraft Map: Flower Series, Flower of Ice, Flower of Fire, Flower of Blood, Flower of Daemon
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

Saturday 1 August 2009

SCMOTD #108 - SAT Control 2

Single And Team Control 2

6P Ind+Team Reactive Control, Twilight 128x128 - by thdtjdqja in 2009
Assemble the best squads with alotted cash to fight against armies in your own and the team's arena.
S.A.T. Control 2 [1.1].scx
Download StarCraft Map: Single And Team Control II, SAT Control 2
Levels: 25×2, +Bosses // Difficulties: 4 ±minerals // Tech: Unresearched // Upg: 4 max // Features: Ban, Suicide
Bonus: GasFor1LevelUpgrade (Left), MoreMineralsPerRound (Top), or MoreInitialEnergy (Right)
Note: use all your minerals because they will zero after the timer; computer can cloak and detect

Award: Personal Favorite

Rarely are maps in the same series featured twice in the SCMOTD, but once again the freedom of squad customization and the dynamics of individual and team play—signature to the Single and Team Control series—have proven to make this map very replayable. SAT Control 2 expands from its prequel by letting players choose one of two enemy groups each level and integrating a boss level every five. Gameplay is enhanced by experience points based bonuses, allowing more resources or energy per round. Though the game sometimes limits what players can buy to prevent overpowering the enemy, it is still essentially a sandbox game and players are free to experiment and have fun every time they play.

Friday 31 July 2009

This Is It, SCMOTD

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.

SCMOTD #107 - Taegeukgi Control

태극기 Control Final

7P Ind+FFA Reactive Control, Ice 128x96 - by kdk8747 in mid 2000s
Actively command your given squads to overcome fierce AI assaults and unrelenting human survivors.
Korea Control (Final).scx
Download StarCraft Map: Taegeukgi Control, Korea Control
Levels: 47 // Lives: 10 // AI: HasVision but NoVision on burrow-vital levels, AutoSeek, AttacksAll
Note: after the computer round, players fight FFA in the center for 90 seconds, winning player gets +1 life

Thursday 30 July 2009

SCMOTD #106 - Sunken & Spore Defense

Sunken & Spore D!!!

6P Walling Drain Defense, Space 128x128 - by Various Authors in early 2000s
Evenly divide between ground and air defenses to prevent mixed enemies from ever leaving your area.
SunkNSpore Def {FiNaL}.scx
Download StarCraft Map: Sunken and Spore Defense, Sunk & Spore, Sunks n Spores
Levels: 16 // Start: Manual // Heroes: 16 + 4 bonus // Walling: Partial // Defeat: >5 enemies reach center
Tip: the end is just behind each player's area, so either make sure no one leaks or protect the center

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