When posting a melee map in this section, it is important to ask yourself a few things:

1. Is this map balanced?
-There is a guide posted in this section to guide you on how to balance a map. It explains the strengths and weaknesses of each race and the conditions a map may have to help or hurt them. If you aren't going to take the time to help yourself to the information already available to you, people are going to be disinclined to help you themselves.

The guide is right here.

2. Is the map play-able?
-Make sure your start locations are properly placed and for the correct players. Also check that your minerals and gas belong to P12 as well as any pre-placed building sprites you are using.

3. Is the map properly decorated?
-No one wants to play a bland looking map. Doodads are a must. The ISOM tool is your friend, not just for making cliffs, but for making the map look pretty.

4. IMPORTANT: Does my map have a concept, and is it worth playing?
-One of THE most important parts of a map is the concept. Nobody wants to play a standard main->nat->minonly->3rd gas->island anymore. Blocking minerals, extended ramps, pre-placed building sprites, anything that makes your map INTERESTING. Now it is hard to balance these interesting aspects, but that is part of making a good melee. Sometimes you have to be experimental in your concepts, even if it affects the balance negatively. This isn't to say that you should make a totally imba map with a weird experimental concept, because that's just silly. Another part of balance, is incorporating these elements positively.

5. Mineral Formations and 'The Gas Issue'
Mineral formations are very important to game play. No one wants their minerals placed in a way that has workers scrambling around the back of them trying to get at a blocked field. And no one wants fields to be further away than they have to be.
Example of good mineral placement:


The gas issue is something even the Koreans didn't get for awhile. Due to differences in how SC handles gas mining from different sides of a CC/Hatch/Nexus, the geyser placement became an issue of balance.
Example:

The top and left geysers will mine faster than the bottom and right geysers. Always remember: Balanced gas > symmetrical gas.



When commenting on a melee map, it is important to ask yourself a few things:

1. Do I know what I am talking about?
-If you have no idea how to make a balanced melee yourself, you really don't have much business trying to tell someone else how to do it. Rather than give bad advice that will only hurt, it's better to be silent and let someone else do the job. If you aren't sure, say so, not everyone's an expert, but if you aren't, do not claim to be.


2. Can the map be improved?
-There are very off chances where a map has been made with a lot of time and care, and is totally fine. There are also times where a map's concept is so bad, or completely lacks a concept, where there is nothing that can be done with it. It is in those cases that you get simple comments of what's wrong with the map, and no details on improvement, because it isn't worth the effort. Some maps can be saved, some can't, and some don't need it at all.

3. Is my comment clear?
-It is always a good idea to make your comment in a clear and understandable manner. Using proper punctuation and grammar should help immensely. Unreadable advice isn't all that helpful.

4. Is my comment constructive?
-Should your post be there? Are you giving constructive advice? Is your advice correct?

5. Am I backseat moderating/causing more trouble?
-There's a report button for a reason. It is advisable to PM moderators, as arguing with them in public usually does not end well.

6. Am I talking to the right person?
-Giving advice to someone who isn't the OP isn't productive. Bringing in OT notes and things that have nothing to do with said topic, are equally useless.


With these tips in mind, you should flourish in this section.

Post has been edited 6 time(s), last time on Feb 25 2010, 9:59 am by Sexcalibear.

Oh my god, we needed this.

Also, perhaps a link to the various guides would help (for part 1).

On it, thanks for the recommendation.

4. IS MY COMMENT CONSTRUCTIVE AND POSITIVE?
I'm sick of seeing flaming and trolling based on the quality of someone's map. If you haven't got anything nice to say, don't say it at all.

5. AM I BACKSEAT MODERATING?
There's a report button for a reason.

Thanks KK.

Added info about mineral formations and the gas issue.

Giving one base 6 mineral patches, one base nine mineral patches, and the two others 8 isn't really good placement.
Never mind, placement != distribution.

Exactly. The melee guide already explains distribution.

Generally having your workers travel the extra distance to mine above you or below you is worse than having them travel to the right or left.

Not true. That is only true when related to gas and even then it has to do with top/left and bottom/right.

I recreated the mineral formations in the pic and made it into a map. You should attach this map to the original post so that people can copy/paste the mineral formations onto their own maps. What do ya think?

Attachments:

Copy/pasting multiple units results in them being 1px off in all versions of SCMD, and therefore useless for a melee map due to main to mineral distance getting fucked up. It will look fine in the editor but wont work in game.

If you uncheck "buildings snap to tile" and "units snap to grid", the pasted units no longer snap to anything and you can place them wherever you want. You can use a mineral formation that's pre-placed on-matrix to get the placement of the mineral formations correct.

But really, just place the minerals close to the base and stick with left/right formations. Placing minerals at the top results in a delay of 1-2s in the initial distance that your workers have to travel to the mineral lines and therefore critically screws up certain build orders, and placing minerals at the bottom results in newly created workers becoming "stuck" against the workers that are currently mining, messing up pulling workers to construct/scout.

Also, the minerals' width means that top/bottom formations are not easy to work with, since they tend to mine less well due to overlapping.