Melee Wizard

A plugin for scmJS, the browser-based StarCraft 1 / Brood War map editor. It places the parts of a ladder-style map that are geometry rather than art, one action each:

• Start locations for 2, 4 or 8 players. Click where Player 1 starts; the others land on its images under the symmetry you chose (mirror, rotation, both diagonals).
• A base's resources. Press on the town hall spot, drag towards where the minerals should go, and let go: the mineral line is laid out on the ring exactly three tiles from the hall — the closest the game allows and the distance it mines fastest from — wrapping round the hall's corner when you point at one, with the geyser just past the end of the line, and the same base for every player. Spots the ground or another unit would refuse show in red while you drag and are left out.
• Bases at every start location the map already has, minerals against the back of each base, in one go.

And around those: a blocking-patch tool (a mineral field of 8, or whatever you set), Mirror selected units (the images of whatever you have selected, for the matching players), Check symmetry (selects every unit that has no counterpart) and a per-player resource summary. Every placement is one undo step.

Install

In scmJS: Plugins ▸ Manage Plugins…, paste

https://github.com/scm-js/plugin-melee-wizard

and press Add. It is normally already in that list, marked default and switched off: tick it to turn it on. To pin a version, add a ref: github:scm-js/plugin-melee-wizard@v1.0.0.

Use

Tools ▸ Melee Wizard… (also Ctrl+Shift+M, or Melee Wizard… on the map's right-click menu) opens the panel. It floats over the map and does not block it.

1. Symmetry. Pick the layout: mirror left ↔ right, top ↔ bottom, rotate 180° (two players); rotate 90°, mirror both ways (four); mirror both ways and both diagonals (eight). The rotations and diagonals need a square map. Player 1 is what you place; the other players are its images. The axes are drawn on the map while a tool runs.
2. Start locations. Press the tool, then click the map where Player 1 starts. The hall footprint and its images are shown under the pointer, each with its player.
3. Add base. Press the tool, then press on the hall spot — inside an existing start location's footprint snaps to it — and drag towards the minerals. The line follows the drag; a plain click points it away from the map's centre, which is where a main's minerals usually go; Shift (or the option) snaps the direction to 45°. Let go to place it, mirrored to every player unless you untick Place for every player.
4. Bases at every start location does step 3 for each start location on the map at once. When the start locations follow the chosen symmetry, the first base is laid out and mirrored, so the bases are exact images of each other; otherwise each is laid out on its own.

The Base section sets what a base is: a preset (main 8 + 1, natural 7 + 1, third 6 + 1) or your own counts, up to two geysers, which end of the line the geyser takes, the gap to the hall (3 is the game's minimum and the fastest mining; more is allowed, slower), the geyser's own gap and how many tiles it keeps from the patches. Resources sets the amounts (1500 and 5000 by default), an optional different amount for the outermost patch at each end, and whether the three mineral field types are mixed for looks or one is used throughout. More holds the blocking patch tool, the mirror and symmetry checks, and the summary.

Layout

plugin.json	the manifest the editor reads (name, version, entry, icon, the API version it needs)
plugin.ts	activate(api): the panel, the three map tools with their previews, the transactions
layout.ts	the pure geometry: the resource ring, the mineral line and geyser, the symmetries and their images, the symmetry check, the base summary
plugin-api/	the editor's emitted type declarations, vendored so this repository type-checks alone
tests/	vitest over layout.ts

plugin-api/ is generated in the editor's repository by npm run build:plugin-types; refresh it from there when the plugin API moves.

How the line is laid out

The game refuses a resource depot within three tiles of a mineral field or geyser, measuring the gap as the larger of the empty columns and the empty rows between the two footprints, and workers mine fastest when the gap is exactly that. So the positions a patch can take are a rectangular ring round the 4 × 3 hall footprint. The line starts at the ring position nearest the direction you point and grows to either side along the ring, always taking the side that keeps the line centred on the direction; along the hall's top and bottom the positions step by a patch width, along its sides by a row, so pointing at a corner wraps the line round it, as the lines on Blizzard's own maps do. The geyser is a 4 × 2 box on its own ring, the nearest clear position past the end of the line on the chosen side, keeping the set spacing from every patch.

Under a mirror or a rotation by 180° every image lands exactly on the tile grid. Under a rotation by 90° a 2 × 1 patch's image is half a tile off the grid; the editor snaps it, so those bases are a half-tile from perfect, as on real four-player rotational maps.

Development

npm install
npm run typecheck
npm test

The editor loads plugins straight from source, so there is no build step. To try local changes, serve this directory with CORS enabled (npx serve --cors .) and add http://localhost:3000/ in Manage Plugins, then use Reload after each edit.

A plugin runs with the editor's own privileges. There is no sandbox.

See docs/plugins.md in the editor for the API tour; this plugin is the worked example for placeUnit / canPlaceUnit / updateUnits inside one document.edit, and for a map tool whose drag is previewed with draw.

Licence

MIT — see LICENSE.