So how do i start? Well, place some Piece of terrain, place a bunch of enemies and place some kind of Units that are able to defeat the upcoming Fortress. WRONG, this have been done over and over again. It was nice in the first Impossible Maps long long ago. Now you can think of the most Unique ways how you kill the 10 Lurks in your front what ever you pick, it have been done already. It will be the same Gameplay, it will be the same boringness. Dont understand me wrong, you still can make out a good Map of this if you're skilled but you wont Create something nice&fresh that way. Starcraft got Limited Amount of Units and Spells they are depleted like the Geysirs on Lost Temple. To give one of the best exceptions Impossible Individual it uses very uncomon ways to defeat the 10 lurkers ahead, however at times it's a bit more like a tricks Map and this means guessing is your best skill its a good map, very tricky challenges but i prefer other Impossible maps.

So if you still wana make something Interesting out of and Impossible, you gotta mix it up with other Generes, give your Map a new feature, give it some Story, give it its own Face - Seriously using Rectangular Terrain was cool once, it was fresh. Using now at this time Rectangular Terrain instead of Isom is just a very big fail in most Cases. To get a bit more specific let me tell some examples: Impossible Versalife - nice&fresh Face, new System... For the Bad ones - there just to many and i dont wana badmount someones Map. The most Horrible terraining you can do is to mix up Rect and Isom terrain without love... For a System i wana call the "Random Unit" System. I mean Seriously giving one player a valkyrie, an overlord and 2 Zerglings while giving another one a Norad II, Infested Kerigan and SCV with endless Minerals? One Player will get mad cause his Units sucks, the other one "should" get mad cause there's no challenge for him. Beside that, it will force the Players to Reload the Game until they got Playable but more often Imbalanced Units. However, if i see that much maps are able to share the Units that "fair" already without this System i probably shouldnt rate it to high.

However, if you wana make some nice and Unique Stuff, think about any edges of it and do it nice. If you only will do them Bad, it's better to stick with the Standard designs, you still can make a good Map out of them if you keep the Units Fair and give the levels a bit different Gameplay. It's realy horrible if you see some nice System and use it in a Bad way on your own Map. You might get some "oh cool" but overall mostly it will lesser the Fun on your Map. By this Way, you also shouldn't get your Ideas out of other Impossibles, if you wana copy some "cool Stuff", better take them from a different Genere. This way you still will give the Impossible Players something new.

So far about some Basics.

One, if not the first Thing i decided about Abyss was, that i give the Players Heroes, or at least some Players which the Team have to keep alive until the End of the Map. This hasn't been used a lot till now and since it doesnt matter much any more which kind of Units i throw into the battle against these 10 Lurkers its not so bad.
So i get a "fresh" System, and the Ability to give each Player a Usefull and Important Unit for every Situation of the Map. For this i loose the ability to use any kind of Spellcaster for the different levels. Well i could still do so, but it would make the Map way too easy. Overall, its a good deal. There enough Imposs out where i may use different Units each level and you wont belive, there even more Maps out where a Player gets the same Units over and over again anyway. In the next step i had to decide the Terrain, well i picked one that isn't very Popular and in this case very less used. The Ashworld brought me up very bad Problems i wouldn't come up in other Tilsets and while i created a shitload of Custom Doodads, its still a bit boring cause you have very less options at this Tileset. However, its a better pick then Jungle and all the other stuff that has been used upside down. Even before i did so, i chosed a Theme for the Terrain. I wanted make a Pa course leading down, an Abyss. Where we are at another Point, it's very annoying if you name your Map in any Way which just Sound cool for you. It will take away apart from the Soul of your Map. Give it a Name which has soemthing to do with your Map if you want it remembered.

But keep in Mind, the Terrain is not only for a nice Vision and a good Gameatmosphere. It's also way, to change your levels Gameplay in a very Unique way. Even if the Players wont realize that mostly, it will greatly improve your Map. I used this for nearly each of my levels on Abyss. To give just one realy simple Example, i use the "Shale" Terrain and Specialy holes in it to show the Players there there are Burrowed Zerg Units to Expect. A thinking Player immediatly will know, there might be something dangerous ahead without having the need of a newbish Scanner. Beside that it looks "real" and improves the Gameatmosphere.

You cannot do much about the levels, you are very limited in Starcraft. Just try to make each level feel different, give a different Quest. For me, i've added already very Unique levels when i started the Map. Dont try to copy Other Maps stuff, a joke works only once. And if you totaly feel to do so, use it at least in a different way.

Adjusting the Difficulty. Well its bad if you make the start easy and the later levels too hard. I always tried to aim for a constant difficulty. Which doesnt mean all is same hard. But as the team expirience and learn to play together also the map slightly increases in difficulty. For example your start of with very wide terrains and much room to micro. Later you have realy to take a look where u place which unit or you might have a Problem. Since i use Heroes, i also decided to Rebalance each Unit Stats for the map, while i hope to get a better balance with this for my lvls, i also use another very Unique feature. As long as your not realy high skilled, i wouldnt recoomend to just randomly modify the Unit stats, or just Increase everything by 2 or divide it. You will end up in a very Unbalanced Game cause this highly effects the Spells and it just realy useless to do so without a good Reason & System beyond.

Beside that another Important point is that all my lvls Connected together, while this is another Unique System, it brings up very much Problems. I realy like it, but its heavily work so decide wise if you realy wana do this. However, i used this for a good Point at Impossible Abyss, i wanted it to be a clean Map. Which means theres not the whole Map cluttered, with stuff around. While this is not too important for a normal Impossible Map, i highly recommend to use Clean Maps for RPGish Maps cause it highly increases the Game Atmosphere.

For this i not only connected all lvls and made it all look like one Unit, i tried to make all look like naturaly, like bringing in reinforcements with the dropships like the terrans have to do on a realy mission (don't use this like i did with other ai scripts, you will have to mess around all the time with the scripts and the outcome. while it looks very nice, it consumed a lot of the time i spent on Abyss (which is far over a year).

I also gave the Computer different Melle Ai scripts or created even my own so that it looks like your fighting an organic World, not a Static one. But this was not only done for a better atmosphere, its also done to give it a Unique Gameplay. In normal Imposs Maps every Unit is realy Stupid and you can use their Stupidity against them so that you can Micro and kill them very easily. At Abyss much of the Units (if it helps the lvl) will act more Intelligent which makes them a way Harder enemy. Which ends up in a higher Skillrequirement for you. Also it will give you a different challenge each Game. You are forced each game to find the optimal Strategie for it. For a example, once it will be a good idea to kill a tech building that he cannot produce a lot of a Unitkind you can fight only bad against. At a other time it might be the best to kill an Upgrade Building or to kill the Unit Producing Building directly. In some Games you also might wana take a strategical spot and defend yourself there for the first if the AI goes for a rush Strategie. Beside all that, you also will play against a different kind of unit and amount every game and the computer will use his Buildings. Theres so much more which will change due this, i canno't write all of it. It realy offers you a totaly different experience compared to other Impossible maps.

You will find a lot of Sounds and Transmissions for the Story, but i didn't only use this to tell the Story and stuff. I also used it as a Unique way to show you that theres something comming your way where you should pay attention while it also improves the Game atmosphere. To give a example, at level 2 (the first Big Protoss Base) you will get a Transmission of the dark Templar as soon as they start chasing you. Not only this will play you a Darktemplar Sound improving the Atmosphere and telling you there might be some of these sneaky Bastards. You also will see the Invisible Darktemplar blinking red for a short Amount of time. Together its the Ultimative way to show you, there's a invisible dangerous enemy coming your way.

This and much more of Systems i used that even a intelligent Player that plays it the first time is able to Win Abyss. One of the hardest Mistakes you can make, is to add lots of Stuff into your Map that just pop out of Nowhere or got a bad description and gona Blow the Players up instantly. Those things are not hard or a nice feature, they are just realy stupid. To be good at it you only need know the map and Newcomers even if they skilled will be doomed and Fags which play the map in and out will blame them Noobs.

Barely anyone will know about this, but Abyss also once had a chat based Banning System, where you could write just into chat to ban some one:) The realy nicest way to implement a (secret?) Ban System in a Clean Map. It doesnt require any additional Crap. However, it's actually quite bad to Implement, a lots of work and you gona change it after each Patch. It's disabled for now, but if i find a better way to implement it, i'll proly do so.

So after all, Impossible Abyss uses Unique Desing in every way Starcraft is editable even if the most of them are Quite Uncommon and not much people will discover them. I still hope i inspired a few to make more fresh and Unique Maps for Starcraft - Not only copying all the Crap Stuff made already all over again. Everyone can make a good Map, just putting enough effort and love into it. A good Map isn't just made by the most complex trigger System. It's made with great ideas by a imaginative Brain ;) Fools and even more Snobs will never be able to do this - no matter for how skilled they deem their self.

Go new Ways, go your Ways not these you think the others will like. And...
don't go popular ways at all... they're mostly from a fool you just turn him into a Snob ;)

Like for the most of my Articles, i look for someone able to Translate it into a Proper English Form. I suck at creating good texts in English. More then the half Content of this Article is lost :(
If you feel able too, Contact me!

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This is not finished! I wrote this when i was realy tired so dont give much about it yet