Aftermath

A plugin for scmJS, the browser-based StarCraft 1 / Brood War map editor. It opens StarCraft replays and shows, on the map the game was played on, what the players did: where buildings went down and when, where units were sent, heat maps of the orders, each player's build order and actions per minute, and the chat, on a timeline you can scrub or play.

It is meant for map makers. On a melee map you can see which paths and chokes players use, where and when they expand, and whether one start location plays differently from another. On a UMS map you can see where players spent their time and which parts of the map nobody went to.

What a replay can and cannot tell you

A replay does not record where units were. It records the orders each player gave, when they gave them, and the map; the game re-runs itself from those to play the replay back. Aftermath reads the orders without re-running the game, so it shows what players asked for:

• a building appears where and when a player ordered it, whether or not it was finished, cancelled or killed on the way;
• a unit in the build order was ordered, not necessarily made;
• the heat maps count where players clicked, not where units ended up or where they died.

Install

In scmJS: Plugins ▸ Manage Plugins…, paste

https://github.com/scm-js/plugin-aftermath

and press Add. To pin a version, add a ref: github:scm-js/plugin-aftermath@v0.1.0.

Use

File ▸ Open Replay… picks one or more .rep files; you can also drop them on the Aftermath panel. Replays from every version of the game are read: from before 1.18, from 1.18 to 1.20, and from 1.21 on.

The replay carries a copy of the map. When the map in front is the one the game was played on (the same size and tileset and at least nine tenths of the same terrain, so a copy you have edited since still counts), Aftermath draws over it. Otherwise it opens the replay's copy in a new tab. View ▸ Aftermath brings the panel back after you close it.

The panel, from the top:

• Which replay, when several are loaded, Open Replay…, Close, which closes the replay and leaves the map open, and Dock / Float: the panel floats over the map at first; Dock moves it into the right-hand column beside the map, and it stays there next time. The same choice is on the plugin's page in Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Plugins ▸ Aftermath.
• The game: its type, length, date and the game version that wrote it.
• The timeline: Play / Pause, a slider, and the speed. 1× is the game's own speed at Fastest.
• The players: colour, name, race, actions per minute over the time they were in the game, and when they left. Untick a player to hide them on the map.
• Actions per minute through the game, one line per player. Click it to go to that moment.
• Show:
  • Buildings: every building ordered up to the timeline, in the player's colour, with a ring around the ones ordered in the last few seconds.
  • Recent orders: where units were sent in the last eight seconds. A dot is a move, a cross an attack or patrol, a ring an ability, a flag a rally point, and a widening circle a minimap ping.
  • Heat: all orders, moves, attacks, buildings or minimap pings, counted up to the timeline or over the Whole game. With several replays of the same map loaded, All N replays of this map adds them together. One game says little about a map; twenty say more.
• Build order: one player's buildings, units, upgrades and research in order. Workers are left out unless you tick Workers, and orders for the same unit next to each other are joined (Zergling ×12 is twelve presses of the button, not necessarily twelve Zerglings). Town halls are in bold. Click a line to go to that moment and, for a building, to the place.
• Chat, when there was any. Click a line to go to that moment.

The overlay is listed under View ▸ Overlays and in the Layers panel, and switches off there like any other. Aftermath never changes the map.

Development

npm install
npm test          # the reader, the analysis and the map comparison
npm run typecheck
npm run build     # dist/plugin.js, the bundle the editor loads

The tests write their own replays in all three formats (tests/writer.ts), so nobody's games are in the repository. Put real replays in fixtures/ (gitignored) and the tests read each of them as well.

File	What it is
replay.ts	Reads a .rep: the sections, the header, every command and the map.
analysis.ts	Per-player build orders, placements, clicks and actions per minute; the heat grid.
chk.ts	The map's size, tileset and tiles, and whether two maps are the same one.
plugin.ts	The panel, the playback clock and the overlay.

The reader follows the replay format as screp (Apache-2.0) documents it in code. Sections from before 1.18 are unpacked with mopaq's PKWARE decoder.

Licence

MIT.