About Page

Last Updated: 2023-06-13

Frequently Asked Questions

What is this website?

This website is a database for StarCraft, StarCraft: Brood War, and StarCraft: Remastered map files (.scm/.scx). It helps users find StarCraft maps that they are looking for, as well as give them useful information about those maps. StarCraft is a video game created by Blizzard Entertainment. This website is not affiliated in any way with Blizzard Entertainment.

Why does this website exist?

Since I started playing StarCraft in 1998, I have always thought that the map making community was very creative. Although I tried making maps in the early 2000s, I never produced anything noteworthy. I'm better at general programming and with this website I saw an opportunity to contribute something back to the community by showcasing, indexing, and preserving some of the creativity and hard work that I saw.

Bounding.net? scmscx.com?

This website was originally launched under the domain name "bounding.net". In December 2022, /u/wfza1 graciously gave me the domain "scmscx.com". I have since moved everything over to this new domain. This does mean that you will need to log in again. All accounts were preserved, it is just that your sessions were reset because they are tied to the domain name.

What does scmscx.com mean?

StarCraft maps come in two file extensions, .scm (for original StarCraft) and .scx (for the expansion, Brood War). The domain name is the concatenation of the two map file formats: scmscx.

Why do we need another map database website?

Most popular map websites have limited functionality, typically offering little more than basic name search and a list of download links. Finding a map still involves a lot of manual effort digging through each map file.

There's a lot of map info buried inside map files that this website will help you search and preview across all maps without downloading a single file. Want to search for maps with a particular unit name? Want to find maps similar to a specific map? Want to see what the minimap looks like? This website helps you find maps by almost any criteria very quickly, and it shows you rich map information instantly without downloading a file.

I'm also focused on making this website a streamlined tool. Everything loads fast with no ads.

How many maps does the database have?

126465. But this answer mostly depends on what the definition of a "map" is. While there are no exact byte-for-byte duplicates in the database, there are many maps that are very similar and potentially even indistinguishable from each other.

Can I contribute maps to the database?

Yes, please register an account and then you will be able to upload any maps that you have. I would appreciate it greatly.

How is this website made? What is the technology behind it?

The website is primarily written in Rust using the actix-web framework. The produced webapp is running on a VM from Contabo. Alongside the webapp is also HAProxy and PostgreSQL database. The actual mapblobs themselves are stored on Backblaze's B2 object storage service. To process and parse maps, I use stormlib as well as my own chk parser. To guess charsets I use a combination of my own algorithm as well as uchardet and compact-enc-det.

Can I download all your maps and make my own site?

Yes, please do. I don't hold any of the rights to the maps on this website, they were created by other people.

Can I link directly to map downloads or minimap previews?

Please go ahead. However, I make no guarantee that the format of those URLs will remain stable.

How can I contact you?

I can be contacted on discord @zxlk or on reddit at /u/zzlk2

Can I make a donation, how much does this site cost to run?

I am not currently accepting donations for this site. If I want to achieve the goal of this website then I believe that the site has to be cheap enough to operate that it will not be a victim of future cost cutting, and I also do not want to run ads on the site. So, this is in some sense an engineering challenge which is interesting for me. To answer the other question, the site currently costs ~4 USD per month to operate. Also, this website is not a for-profit venture and I don't want the website to generate any revenue. I work on this website because I enjoy solving the engineering problems that it presents.

How many people are using this website?

Over the last 24 hours there were 2588 map pages viewed. Over the last 7 days there were 2671 map pages viewed per day. Over the last 30 days there were 2625 map pages viewed per day.

Credit and Thanks

I want to thank the staredit.net community for a great deal of support and answering my questions with regards to parsing maps and many more things. scmscx.com would not be possible without their help. Check out their discord at https://discord.gg/TqShZ66QnV

Ladislav Zezula for creating stormlib, which is what provides all the MPQ parsing functionality for scmscx.com.

Mauz for a tremendous amount of testing, discussion and ideas, as well as letting me use the domain name 'bounding.net'. His original idea when registering the domain was to create a list of bounds sorted by author and difficulty. He also maintains a list of maps he's made on his website http://rbkz.net/bound.

I also want to give a shout out to reddit user /u/wfza1, for originally linking to bounding.net from scmscx.com in the early days, and for eventually giving me the scmscx.com domain. Thank you, I greatly appreciate it.