StarEdit comes on the StarCraft CD and it's in your StarCraft folder after you install. It looks confusing at first. It is confusing at first. Here's how I learned it, in the order you need it.

File, New. You pick the tileset (that's what the ground looks like: Badlands, Space Platform, Installation, Ash World or Jungle World), the size, and what the ground starts as. Pick a small size for your first one. 64 x 64 is plenty. A big map takes forever to fill up and it's mostly empty.

StarEdit works in layers. You switch layers to do different things: one for terrain, one for units, one for locations, and some others. If you click and nothing happens, you're probably on the wrong layer. That happened to me about a million times.

Under the Scenario menu you set up the players: who's a human, who's the computer, and what race each one is. You can also set up forces, which are teams, so players on the same force start out allied.

Then put down a Start Location for every player. It's a unit you place on the units layer. In a melee map, that's where each player's base starts. If a player doesn't have one, the map won't work right. In a Use Map Settings map, it's where the screen starts looking.

Locations are invisible boxes you draw on the map on the locations layer. Players never see them, but your triggers use them for everything: "when somebody gets HERE," "make units HERE." Double-click a location to give it a name. Give them real names, like "Finish Line" or "Zerg Spawn NW." In Fortress of Doom I had "Location 14" through "Location 31" and that is one of the reasons it doesn't work.

Triggers are how you make your own rules. Scenario menu, Triggers, New. Every trigger has three parts:

• Players: who the trigger is for. One player, a force, or All Players.
• Conditions: what has to be true. Like "Current Player brings at least 1 Zergling to Finish Line." Or "Elapsed Time is at least 300 game seconds."
• Actions: what happens when the conditions are true. Like "Create 10 Zerglings at Zerg Spawn NW," or putting a message up on everybody's screen, or "Victory."

When ALL the conditions are true, ALL the actions happen. StarEdit writes them out like sentences, so you can read your trigger out loud and check it. Here's the one that ends a race in Zergling Derby, the way it looks:

And then a second trigger for everybody else:

A switch is like a light switch, on or off, that you name yourself. The winner turns it on, and the switch being on makes everybody else lose. I figured that out myself and I'm very proud of it.

Conditions I use the most: Always, Bring, Command, Deaths, Elapsed Time, Countdown Timer, Switch.
Actions I use the most: Create Unit, Order (to make units walk or attack somewhere), the one that puts words on the screen, Set Switch, Wait, Kill Unit, Give Units to Player, Victory, Defeat, Preserve Trigger.

Normally a trigger only happens once. The first time the conditions are true, the actions happen, and then that trigger is done forever.

If you add the action Preserve Trigger, it doesn't get used up. It keeps checking, and every time the conditions are true, it happens again. That's how my defense map sends wave after wave and how Zergling Derby gives you a new zergling every time yours dies.

BUT. If the conditions are ALWAYS true, a preserved trigger happens again and again, super fast, forever. Create Unit plus Preserve Trigger plus a condition that's always true is how you fill a fortress with Hydralisks until the game stops making units. I know this from experience. Use a Wait, or a timer, or a switch you turn off, so it doesn't run wild.

In a melee map the game decides who wins. In a Use Map Settings map, you decide, with the Victory and Defeat actions. Think about every way the game could end. In Evacuation, there's a trigger for winning (bring 20 civilians to the pad), a trigger for losing (11 civilians are dead), and another one for losing (all your soldiers are dead). If you forget one, the game just keeps going and everybody sits there.

And don't ever put "Always" as the condition for Victory. See Fortress of Doom, Try 1.

Save your map. Then start StarCraft, go to Single Player, play a Custom game, pick your map, and set the game type to Use Map Settings (if it's that kind of map). Play it all the way through by yourself before you show anybody. Then play it again and try to break it. Do the stupid thing on purpose. Walk the wrong way. Let everything die. If something weird happens, go back to StarEdit and fix it.

THEN play it with your friends. Your friends will find the thing you missed anyway, but at least it won't be something embarrassing like everybody winning in one second.

There are no downloads on this page. My dad says no and also I don't know how. But there are two ways:

1. E-mail me at [email protected] and tell me which map you want. I'll send it to you. They're small, they'd even fit on a floppy. Put the map file in your StarCraft maps folder and it will show up in the list.
2. Play one with me on Battle.net. When you join a game that's on a map you don't have, StarCraft sends you the map automatically. So if I'm hosting Zergling Derby and you join, you get Zergling Derby. E-mail me and we'll pick a time. My mom says not on school nights after 9.

If you make a map with one of my ideas, that's OK, just tell people where you got it.