Is a Decade of Game Design Lost?

[Krazy]

So for a special project I actually opted to reinstall Starcraft: Broodwar. Just for kicks, I popped on to Battle.Net to see if any new maps had come out in the two or so years since I've logged on.

I played Starcraft: Broodwar for a good decade, pretty consistently on Battle.net. I knew several map makers and for more than a decade the game seemed able to survive despite the dramatic shifts in gaming over that span of time.

However, when I logged on today... it was a ghost town. There was one game on US East, and there were still some games on Asia. But it seems like Starcraft: Broodwar gaming has all but died.

With that in mind, with hard drives failing, with uploads vanishing. . . are the vast majority of Starcraft: Broodwar maps simply going to be lost in the ether?

I mean if someone wanted to consider a history of the MOBA gaming style, would they even be able to find a version of the original Aeon of Strife?

Starcraft was one of many venues which foregrounded tower defense maps, which have since become an indie game subgenre. Yet how many of these maps are simply going to vanish into the ether?

If anyone still has a copy of many of the popular Starcraft: Brood War maps, I would be very interested in copies of many of them.

[IskatuMesk]

I downloaded a huge torrent off of TL a while back that had I think most of the OSL finals from the beginning years to the final games. So, there's definitely people that have hoarded a way a ton of stuff. You might want to try asking there.

[Pr0nogo]

East gets more games than one quite regularly. Make sure you're not filtering out UMS lobbies.

[Chriso]

a

[wibod]

I have a shit ton of maps sitting on one of these hard drives, I'll upload it at some point.

Edit: Good news. Located the drive, bad news it's an IDE drive and I'm too lazy to install it in a computer that has IDE cables. I'll do that at some point before the weekend is over.

[Thalraxal]

This thread is a good example of why one day digital archaeology will be a very interesting field of study.

I've never really bothered to backup most of the UMS maps I'd gotten off of B.net over the years. I've got a few maps my friends and I enjoyed, but its not a very substantial collection. I mostly played SC1 for the campaigns, so that's what I took more care to preserve.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Personally, I do like to keep many things ... including pretty much all SC1 and WC3 maps I ever downloaded or made in my life.

Although contact-wise, I am not sure how we would get in touch, especially when I do have about 3 GB if I combine downloaded maps (about 111 MB although), previous contest campaigns to test and so on and so on.

[Mr.]

I actually saved a bunch of SC campaigns quite a while ago, I actually think it may have been from a listing somebody posted here, or possibly over at good ol' Star Alliance (does that still exist?). Anyway, going through the list, and disregarding everything that's currently hosted here on CC, I'm left with these campaigns and/or mods:

After Brood War
Banshee
DW Alpha
Fall of the Gods
Forgotten World
Huncraft Genocide
Newrand Citadel
RazorBlade
SW Open Rebellion
The Antioch Chronicles Part I - Psionic Storm
The Antioch Chronicles Part II - Negative Suns
The Scion 6 Saga
Wicked Reality


I don't really have any old multiplayer maps, I think. I might have backed them up at some point, but I'll have to dig for them. I'll let you know if I find anything else.

EDIT: Oh, I also have BW patches from 1.07-1.13f saved, but I think those might also be available on battle net itself.

[IskatuMesk]

Billy > SA is still there. Magic announced a launch of a new site and then hasn't activated my account for 2+ months since that announcement and clearly isn't at all involved in it for now. It exists, but it's been dead for many years.

I think Jim_Raynor has a stash of campaigns hosted in a thread somewhere here.

[Lavarinth]

I miss Zelda64{FINAL}--DIAMOND-v999BW

[Church]

I think Jim_Raynor has a stash of campaigns hosted in a thread somewhere here.

Here it is. If any links are broken, let me know and I can reupload them (aside from the ones marked as not having a link.)

[Krazy]

Thanks for all the replies everyone!

I've gotten some maps from ricky (including, incidentally, my own lol--wish I could find a copy of the revised versions of atai where I fixed some of the bugs though).

I also poked around some big bundles on teamliquid etc. There I found a few more that I was looking for.

However there still are some I haven't managed to unearth:

Versions of aeon of strife prior to "final v2". Note that I'm not inherently looking for "aeon of strife 2" which is a different map.

Many of the "lord of the rings" maps: lotr sog rh for example.

I also think I came across zelda 64 in one of the bundles.

[Chriso]

a

[wibod]

Pulled that hard drive, unfortunately I can't seem to find the maps on that drive or this computer. I'll take another look later this weekend, otherwise it may gave been lost.

[Krazy]

"The starting walls were siege-tanks (blue colored I think), and the starting enemy zombies were Zealots."

Do you possibly mean Resident Evil: Raccoon City?