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The StarCraft Campaign Editor, commonly known as StarEdit, is Blizzard Entertainment's official level editor for StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War. The editor's trigger system allows users to change maps radically and create custom map scenarios. The StarCraft community has constructed new editors and functionalities that grant users even more power to modify the game. The company Microstar sold a CD with new levels created with the StarEdit feature, but was forced to stop when Blizzard won their court case against its distribution.

Scenarios are generally either melee or Use Map Settings (UMS) games. Melee games start all players at a random location with only their main base building (Command Center, Hatchery, or Nexus) and four mining units. This is the most popular type of game, used in tournaments and ladder games. Most casual melee games are played on "money" maps, maps with extremely large amounts of immediately available resources. Initial mineral and gas deposits are often set to a cap of 50,000 or more units to eliminate the need for expansion sites. "Money maps" have been criticized for failing to challenge players to develop key skills such as order-building and expansion-taking, favoring weaker players.

Use Map Settings games are less structured and often incorporate liberal use of specialized triggers and setups to change gameplay. Scenarios based on 'genres' have surfaced, including Defense maps, StarCraft Diplomacy, RPGs, Magic: The Gathering, Madness, Bounds, and The Lord of the Rings themed maps. Single-player "campaigns," long scenarios played out over several maps that have been edited together with StarEdit, have gained prominence. Following the lead of the Antioch Chronicles, many campaigns include modifications that add new heroes. Mapmakers can create new art files, creating completely new units and characters, which StarEdit is unable to do. Popular campaigns include Campaign Creations' The Fenix, Legacy of the Confederation, Life of a Marine, and StarCraft.org's official campaigns, The Shifters and Fields of Ash.

Although StarEdit was the original StarCraft level editor, it has been replaced by other third-party editors. These editors include StarForge, SCMDraft, and XtraEditor. These editors can be found here.

References

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "StarCraft Campaign Editor" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

1. IGN Staff (1998-11-10). "Blizzard Wins in Starcraft Case". IGN PC. IGN. Retrieved 2006-08-19. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
2. "The History of Diplomacy". The World of Diplomacy. 2006-08-01. Retrieved 2006-08-20. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

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