SCAG Homepage - Packed Mineral Tutorial

NOTE: If you are having problems with the program, please refer to the FAQ at the bottom, for questions I have been asked and feel that others may have. If you have a new questions which IS NOT on the FAQ, then email me at fernando2682@hotmail.com with it and I'll try to add it if it is relevant.

Alright first thing's first. You need to download the file scm_toolkit_full.zip. In this zip archive you will find all the files and programs necessary to make stacked maps. In order for this editor to work properly, you must have Starcraft v1.07 installed on your computer. This editor WILL NOT work with the Brood War expansion set.

This one's easy, simply uninstall Starcraft from your computer (be sure to save any maps you have downloaded by moving them out of the download folder). Then grab the original SC CD and pop it in the drive. Install Starcraft from the CD (but not BW!). In the scm_toolkit_full.zip that you have already downloaded (you DID download it didn't you?) you will find 'Star_107.exe.' This is the patch that you ned to apply in order to patch Starcraft up to version 1.07, the ony version compatible with this editor. Simply patch it up, then copy the folder to another location on your hard drive. After this, you can ptch up the original folder to 1.09 and install BW if you'd like but be sure that the folder containing the 1.07 version remains unchanged. This is the one you will be using to modify maps.

Well, now that you have Starcraft patched up to verson 1.07, you need to install the editor and the files that it needs to run properly. Unzip the files 'Vb4.zip' and 'RunPack1.zip' from the archive, and install both of these file packs. These are REQUIRED for the editor to work. After doing this, unzip 'mpq2k_pack.zip' and 'ScmToolkit_mpq2k.zip.' Put all the files from these two into your main Starcraft directory. Don't worry if it tells you something already exists, simply overwrite it.

Well, hold yer horses. Before creating any new map using this editor, I recommend you do a little bit of planning and research as to how you will like your minerals to be layed out. This will GREATLY help you during the actual placing phase. Grab a pen and some paper (grid paper works really nice) and begin to plan out how you want your minerals and vespene to look in relation to you starting locations.

Alright believe it or not, ALL of the actual placing of minerals, vespene, and starting locaitons takes place using good 'ol StarEdit that comes with Starcraft. Yep that's right, no modifications or special programs here. Simply open up StarEdit, and design the terrain of your map. After you have created all of the terrain and chosen where you would like the bases to be is where the real fun begins.

Before I go any further, let me give ya a little background on how SCM ToolKit actually works. SCM ToolKit is not a placer at all. It can in no way add any type of units, minerals, vespene, or starting locations to any map.

Well, here is where the real beauty of SCM ToolKit lies. SCM ToolKit is a rearranger of objects. It can take any object on your map, and change its location so that it is now somewhere else.

"Oh wow, whoop-tee-friggin-doo, that sure sounds useful!" (Note the sarcasm)

Ah, I see you're missing the implications of this. SCM ToolKit lets you move objects ANYWHERE on a map. What it is commonly used for is to place several mineral patches at the exact same location on a map. This "stacks" the minerals in one patch and while the player can only see one patch, there are really 5, 10, or however many minerals patches you placed there. All your workers can now mine the same patch AT ONCE, and the lengthy time travelling to and from mineral patches is greatly minimized. As a matter of fact, the best place to stack minerals would be directly next to your starting location, meaning that workers can mine minerals and deliver them to your base instantly after they collect them. This now means that with a few wrokers, you will collect INSANE amounts of minerals in miniscule time.

One more important thing. Before you begin to move things around in SCM ToolKit, you need to first have placed all the players, mineral patches, and vespene geysers that you want in the final map SOMEWHERE on the map. The location where you placed them is truly arbitrary because you will move it all around with SCM ToolKit anyway. Take the following example:

Lets say you are creating a 6-player map. You decided that each player will have 4 vespene geysers and 20 stacked mineral patches. Before you begin to modify the map with SCM ToolKit, you must place 24 vespene geysers (4 for each), 120 mineral patches (20 for each), and the starting location for 6 players somewhere on your map with regular StarEdit. Save this map, and then open it in SCM ToolKit (be sure to close StarEdit first, they can't both be open at once).

For a good example of how you should place minerals, click here for a screenshot.

"Uh oh! I have a problem! I don't understand the (X,Y) coordinate system used to place minerals! Help!"

Take it easy now, I have a simple solution to all your problems. Let me explain. First of all, have you ever noticed in StaEdit how every item you place is placed at a certain (X,Y) coordiate? Simply look at the bottom left hand side of the StaEdit window. As you move your cursor around the screen, it displayed the current (X,Y) coordinate of your cursor. The system used by StarEdit is nice and simple, but maps really use a more exact system. In StarEdit, everything is defined on a grid. Each square of the grid is 32x32 pixels in size.

Lets say you want to place somethig at (2,2). What this means is that you are really placing the objet at position (64,64). As you go to move things around with SCM ToolKit, you need to enter the coordinates in the exact pixel locations instead of these grid locations. In order to simplify map-making, I created three versions of the same program which greatly reduce the time required to calculate the exact pixel locations based on the desired grid location. These can be found in the 'Helper.zip' file.

First, use Staredit to determine where you want to place the mineral patch/vespene geyser/starting location. Then open up either the first or second version of my program and enter the grid location StarEdit gives. Be sure to specify whether its a mineral patch, starting location, or vespene geyser, and *POP* you get the pixel locations you should enter. For more detailed maps and to save time, I created the third version, which includes spaces for all 8 players and 2 mineral locations per player.

One warning, once you edit the map with SCM ToolKit, there's no going back. You WILL NOT be able to re-open the map with StarEdit and keep the mineral positions, only with SCM ToolKit. So if you change your mind and want to add things instead of just rearrange them and you had already rearranged say 100 different mineral patches, StarEdit will give you an error and remove any stacked patches, leaving single patches where they once were.

"Ok, this all seems nice, but is so labor intensive! If I am stacking 8 players and 30 minerals per player, this turns out to be over 200 units!?"

Well, that's true, it does tend get real big real fast the more patches you want to stack. Up until now, there was nothing much you could do about this. After all this time stacking the tedious way, I have developed a small program that will *gasp* DO THIS ALL FOR YOU!

Not really, this new program of mine will do all the calculations and placing for you, but it needs to interact with SCM ToolKit. In order for it to work, SCM ToolKit needs to be open at the same time that you run my program. Detailed instructions can be found within the program itself. See below to download it.

Q) I was using SCMToolkit and following the tutorial but I can't get it to save the map, like I move the minerals around but it doesnt save the map!
A) Make sure of a few things: Staredit is not open, there is a copy of MPQ2K.exe in the folder containing the map, all the SCM ToolKit and MPQ2K.exe files are in the main SC folder. This should solve your problem.

Q) When I go to open a map, it says "Could not find the chk file, "staredit\scenario.chk" What do I do!?
A) If its giving you this error, then be sure that lmpqapi.dll is in the main SC folder along with all the SCM ToolKit files. This *sometimes* solve this problem. Another cause of this problem may be the map name. Do you think that your map looks cool because it uses 1337 haxx0r letters, in the file name? Well, DON'T!! SCM ToolKit apparently has a problem with these letters. Use standard alphanumeric characters instead, and leave names like " •ÐëstrüctïvëFörcës•01.scm " for until AFTER you have modified it with SCM ToolKit. This is the MOST COMMON error that people recieve after attempting to use SCM Toolkit, and unfortunately I am not entirely sure what causes it. Since I didn't make the SCM Toolkit program, I can't even begin to understand what the hecks going wrong. I solved this error when I got it by making sure that lmpqapi.dll was in the main SC folder along with all the SCM ToolKit files. This however has not worked for a few of my friends, who have never been able to solve this error. I don't know, try moving files around, gl!

Q) Wait a minute, when you say to put the files in the main SC folder, do you mean the 1.07 folder? or the 1.09?
A) Whenever I mention "main SC folder", I'm referring to the 1.07 folder. If you move files there and it still doesnt work, feel free to try to move em into the 1.09 folder, this won't cause any problems with your existing 1.09 installtion, though I never had to do that to make SCM ToolKit work.

Q) When I try to load any map with SCM ToolKit, it gives me an error saying Could not find MPQ archiver, "mpq2k.exe" I have extracted all the files into the root starcraft directory, and I double checked to make sure that mpq2k.exe was also there, what can I do?
A) Well, you have to be sure that you place a copy of MPQ2K.exe in the main SC folder, AND ALSO in the folder that contains the map that you are going to modify. If for example the map is in the \maps folder, be sure to place a copy of MPQ2K.exe in the maps folder. That should eliminate this error.