Last month, we brought you our very first Community Map Spotlight. This feature takes a look at some of the best community maps and delves into what makes them great. Additionally, we sit down with the map makers themselves and get some insight into what went into the creation of the maps.

For our second feature, we’re taking a look at a new map from the creator of Habitation Station. This map offers complex attack paths and expansion options for players to explore. Make the right choices and you’ll quickly find yourself secure and safe in a commanding lead. Making the wrong choices and you’ll quickly find yourself spread too thin and open to enemy harassment. Our map this month is Moonlight Madness.

Moonlight Madness

Created by SidianTheBard
Playable: 150x158
Type: 1v1
Players: 2

While a map overview is a good way check out the general layout, let’s dig a bit deeper. Our strategic overview will make it easy to check out the statistics and interesting features on this map.

Strategic Overview

Moonlight Madness comes to us from Grant “SidianTheBard” Wachtor. We spoke with Grant to discuss his thoughts on map making and the details behind this map.

Psione: Hi, Sidian. Why don’t we start with you telling us a little bit about your experience in map making?

Sidian: I’ve been making maps for video games all the way back in Brood War. I was never much of a melee map maker in Brood War and mainly just created UMS type maps such as Sunken Defense and Bound maps. After Brood War, I got really into Counter Strike and started using the Valve Hammer Editor to create maps. Again, I’d just make fun maps or “Aim” maps for practice and never really got into the competitive map making for Counter Strike.

Eventually, StarCraft II came out and I just picked up the Editor and kept creating maps. I was pumping out maps on Team Liquid every other week just trying to learn how to map better and better. My first huge break into the competitive mapping scene was during the IPL Map Making Tournament where my map Darkness Falls was picked in their top five and was used during their Map Tournament and Team Arena Challenge. Not too shortly after that, I got second place during the Red Bull Mapping Tournament with Habitation Station, which after its epic showing at Red Bull Battle Grounds New York, I was lucky enough to have Blizzard use it on ladder.

P: There are many who feel that Habitation Station is one of the best maps we’ve seen in StarCraft II and responsible for bringing back the use of High Yield expansions. Has the reputation of this map altered the way you go about creating maps? Do you feel any extra pressure due to its success?

S:  I’d love to meet these so called people who feel Habitation Station is one of the best maps, are you sure they exist? Seriously though, I haven’t really changed a whole bunch in how I create maps and as for feeling extra pressure, not really. Generally I’m such a laid back person and I’ve been mapping long enough to know that you really can’t please everybody. No matter what new or innovative map you might create you will always have people telling you why it isn’t good. 

Habitation Station

P: Since you seem to be pretty aware that it can be difficult to avoid negative feedback, even with the best maps, how do you judge what feedback will improve your maps and what feedback is just negativity?

S: Generally if a player just lists off problems and don’t give their reasoning behind the feedback, and this sounds bad, I tend to ignore them most of the time. You get a lot of people that will comment on your map that just say “Gold base sucks” or “Middle high ground path is bad” but they don’t really give you a reason why they feel the High Yield expansion isn’t good or the middle ground is bad. If they can’t take an extra minute to tell you why they feel that way, why should you really care? There are always plenty of other players out there that will take the extra time and write out their reasoning or even take screenshots and use their pro paint skills to show off their thoughts.

Usually if multiple people are telling you to change something up, you can open up the map, change that certain thing and see how you actually feel about the changes. Play a couple games against the AI or against some friends if possible. Do you like that change? Does the map feel better overall? Does that make it more balanced? The most important thing to remember is that at the end of the day it is your map so if you don’t like the change, you don’t have to go through with it.

P: Where do you find you get most of the ideas or concepts for your maps?

S: I’ve been watching and playing StarCraft II since beta, so I’ve seen how gameplay has evolved over time. Generally, when I’m thinking of new ideas or concepts for maps I try to play around with ideas that we either don’t see any more or help out a certain race that isn’t doing so well. For instance, with Habitation Station, there weren’t really any competitive maps with High Yield expansions around, as they were pretty much considered a joke and never used. Also, what was the last popular two-player mirrored map with lots of airspace?  Scrap Station, maybe? But also at the time, Terran were doing fairly poor so when creating Habitation Station I put in concepts that I believe would benefit Terran. Airspace for drops, High Yield minerals for Bio, and a shorter rush distance for aggression. Little did I know, once all was said and done Terran performed the worst out of any race on that map.

P: Can you explain some of your goals when deciding to create Moonlight Madness? What type of map were you looking to make?

S: There was an opportunity with Team Crux and their Map-ximum tournament to get your map play tested. So when creating Moonlight Madness I had one map in my mind. Crossfire. I wanted to create a map with complex pathing and a backdoor into the main. We generally don’t see maps with backdoors anymore because once upon a time they were considered imbalanced and no other maps have tried them out since. If I won this tournament it would be a great chance to get some play testing done on a map with a backdoor again. It’s just another concept that I’d like to see play out in the meta-game today. 

P: Can you tell us about the features on Moonlight Madness and your thoughts behind each?

S: First, which I’ve already talked about a bit, is having the backdoor into your main. Any paths leading to the backdoor are actually blocked by rocks and you have collapsible rock towers on your main base ramp so you can seal it off. I think being able to expand either way depending on your strategy, opponent or race gives it the possibility to be different from game to game. 

Backdoor in Main Base

Second, there is a potential third base that is farther to reach by ground but has a single wide ramp as the only entrance. We saw a base similar to this in Crossfire. Not necessarily a third, but it was usually a hidden fourth or fifth base. Is this something that Terran or Protoss would use because of how powerful walling or Forcefields could be when holding it? Now you have a choice in thirds, take the gold base, which is tough to hold because there is plenty of harass opportunities with it, take the farther third base which has a single wide ramp or take your backdoor third, which is closer but causes you to have to ping pong between your bases.

Third Base

There is also the quick-to-take High Yield expansion. Since creating Habitation Station, I’ve been intrigued with having a High Yield base as a possible main, natural, or third base (your choice).  I think it brings out many different timing attacks because now you need fewer workers to get that income, so you can bring out that aggression sooner or get that fourth base sooner, etc. Gangnam style is possible on this map; although it takes ~10 seconds longer than it did on Habitation Station.

High Yield Expansion

Lastly, there is the complex pathing around the map.As you can probably tell from the overview, there are a lot of ramps and a lot of different paths on the map. Do you walk towards the center of the map and take control of a Xel’Naga Watchtower even though it might move you out of position? Do you break down the backdoor rocks to give more options of movement or do you keep them up to feel more protected? There are also many droppable pods through out that map which hopefully we could see some awesome Siege Tank, Colossus or Reaper play. Either way, the player gets many choices on this map.

Pathing through the Middle

P: Which feature on Moonlight Madness are you most excited about?

S: It’s honestly hard to just pick one feature because I’m curious to see how they all work together. I really want to see if the bases at three and nine o’clock positions with the single wide ramp will get used as thirds or possible fourths. I’m curious to see if having several places with droppable high-ground is still considered overpowered for Terran even with the introduction of the stronger Queen and the Mothership Core. Finally, the High Yield expansion has a great chance of seeing some awesome play on this map so that excites me. It’s close enough to your main and natural expansion that taking it as a third could be viable, yet it opens you up to many more harassment locations that will keep you on your toes.

P: Which feature on Moonlight Madness are you most uncertain about?

S: The backdoor and the high-ground drop pods. As I’ve mentioned before, we just haven’t seen a map in competitive play that included a backdoor for quite a long time. Even with all the rocks able to block it off, it might still not play out as I’ve imagined. 

With the handful of high-ground pods, even though it could be a very easy fix if they turn out imbalanced, it’s still something I worry about because players might find them a huge turn off from the start and not even bother testing the map to its fullest.

P: Are there any ideas or concepts you’d like to see more map makers explore?

S: I’d like to see more mapmakers explore asymmetrical maps. I think there can be some very unique ideas that can help or hurt certain races depending on the spawn position they get. Maybe one spawn point has an in-base natural with a droppable high-ground pod next to it. The other could have a safer third where rocks can open up a backdoor into that base for harassment. You’d then have specific strategies depending on where you spawned and what race your enemy is. Now I don’t necessarily mean completely imbalanced differences, but even the slightest things could make quite a huge impact on the builds.

As for more extreme concepts, I’d like to see more retractable bridges used. A couple mappers (Iezael, Sigma & Scorp) have experimented with it a bit, and we saw the map Fallen Dreams get used in Totalbiscuit’s ShoutCraft. I still think it’s a very cool feature that could make way for some island type of maps.

P: Other than this map, which of your maps are you most proud of?

S: Habitation Station for obvious reasons. I also have an eight spawn map (1v1, 2v2, 4v4, FFA) by the name of Korhal Carnage Knockout which I believe is a really fun map to play with friends. It’s also a very unique setup that we’ve never seen before. Lastly, one of my most recent creations named Color Crush is a very fun, whacky looking map that is inspired by Shakuras Plateau.

Color Crush

P: You mentioned that Korhal Carnage Knockout has a setup that hasn’t been used before. Can you explain that a bit more?

S: It’s an eight spawn map that can be played 1v1, 2v2, 4v4 or FFA and will actually be balanced (yea…kind of!) in all modes! If you’re doing teams you’ll most likely be stuck on only one or two base, but let’s be honest here, how often in team games do you get more than two bases? If you play 1v1 there are certain locked spawn positions so you don’t spawn right next to your opponent. It wouldn’t be very enjoyable to spawn ~10 seconds by ground from them. 

Korhal Carnage Knockout

Korhal Carnage Knockout also has collapsible rock towers at each entrance of your base and it has multiple collapsible rock towers towards the middle of the map. Pretty much every base on this map has the possibility to become a semi-island because you can completely shut yourself in with rocks. The middle of the map has a High Yield base and very powerful Xel’Naga Watchtowers that actually give vision into enemy bases. It tries really hard to make players move out into the middle of the map instead of just hugging the edges the entire game.

P: Getting away a bit from your own maps, what are some of your all-time favorite melee maps?

S:  Layout wise, Cloud Kingdom. It was such a great map for it’s time and really turned the meta (Colossus turtle, Brood Lord/Infestor) into much more exciting action packed games. Aesthetically, Abyssal City is one of my favorite maps just to look at.

P: Are there any past community maps that you feel flew under the radar and people should check out?

S:  I was quite the fan of AEM Isomer created by NegativeZero.

AEM Isomer

The general mineral layout might seem fairly standard but I love the movement throughout the map. If you don’t want to get choked off on ramps you have to take longer paths around the map. It reminds me of Cloud Kingdom a little bit where you want to move straight through the center because it’s the fastest way to the enemy base, yet then you have to be extremely cautious attacking through a choke point and allowing the enemy to set up a better concave.

If you like using unique strategies and playing on innovative maps, now's your best chance to do exactly that. Moonlight Madness offers something different that provides a fun challenge to players of any level.

We've also made the map easy to find and play. Just navigate to the Custom Games list, browse to Top Played Games and you'll find Moonlight Madness at the top of the list as a featured map.

So grab a friend, jump into a game, and have some fun.