Fog of war

StarCraft maps have a Fog of War layer, which can be used to reveal parts of the map. When playing the single player missions, you may have noticed that certain buildings are visible on the mini-map, despite your units not ever having seen them. This was done by "cutting out" a piece of the fog of war over the building.

Typically, map makers never touch the Fog of War layer, and if/when they do, they either remove a small chunk to reveal a building, or remove all of it. What they don't realize is that other effects can be achieved with this layer.

Editing the Fog

Simply go to the Fog of War layer and click in the main window. Clicking will toggle the fog between on and off for the player you have selected.

• If you hold down Ctrl you can edit the fog for all players at once. Completely covering a large map with a Fog of War pattern can take quite some time. You can edit the size of the Fog of war brush the same way you do it with other Brushes.
• If you want to make a large grid, like shown in the first picture of "Darkness degrees" beneath, first make all horizontal lines with a brush size of 100/1 than make all vertical lines with a brush size of 1/100, or bigger. It depends on the size of your map.
• If you want all the players to have the effect visible, make sure to hold down Ctrl when you edit the fog. If you don't, you'll end up having to repeat the entire process for the other players.

Examples:

Darkness degrees

The fog of war isn't strictly all-or-nothing. By making a pattern in the fog of war layer, you can create various levels of darkness.

Mini-map Appearance

Each terrain tile shown on the in-game mini-map can be either unrevealed (Black), partly revealed (Grayscale), or revealed (Color). Using the technique shown above will give your unrevealed mini-map a distinctive "pixelated" look.

SCMDraft 2

With SCMDraft 2 you can reveal or un-reveal the entire map at once.