Many players create their own maps for Starcraft and make them available for others to download as well. However, there may be times when you have difficulty with the creation process or opening the maps to play them. One of the common problems that players encounter is in getting 255 upgrades to work on their maps. To do this you need to have an advanced editor that will exceed the normal limits set by StarEdit, which is the editor that comes with the game. The best editor to use for this purpose is the StarCraft X-tra Editor, but you can also achieve the same results with SCM Draft 2 and StarForge.

When you do cerate a map you may not want it to open in a Starcraft map editor. There are various ways of protecting your map with the most recommended one being ProEdit. When you are creating your own Starcraft maps, it is important that you backup all your creations on disc so that you won’t accidentally delete one that you don’t have finished.

When you speak of adding triggers, you can add up to almost two million triggers on one map – 1,789, 569 to be exact, but even the most complicated Starcraft maps have less than 4000 triggers. Normal maps have between 300 – 500 triggers. It is impossible to use the maximum allowable number of triggers in one map because of the method of calculation. Each trigger takes up to 2400 bytes uncompressed and even though that is a high number, the trigger does not really use that much space. When you want to convert sounds in your maps so that they don’t take up as much space, you should covert them all to 16-bit WAV files, which will make them smaller. A 16-bity WAV always compresses smaller than an 80-bit WAV files.

If you want to create terrain with square edges, this is one thing you won’t be able to do with StarEdit. You will need to have one of the other map editors to create the terrain in this way. You will also need an advanced editor to stack minerals on top of one another so that many SCV’s can mine what looks to be only one mineral. Although you can change the color of the players by using Player Properties, it is best to do this task last because each time you open the map in the editor, you will have to reset the colors.

If you use one of the advanced editors, you can also place lurker eggs on the map that will not die. You can also make armour shields that go above level 1 with either SCXE or StarForge. You can load invisible bunkers with any editing program, but you have to use the “Move Units” action if you want to move the bunkers to another location. Even if you do move it, the bunker will still fire as it was still in its original location, which is why you need to have a location for each bunker when creating the map.