Walk into the StarCraft rooms here on the Internet Gaming Zone and you will notice something funny going on. For every melee match on Lost Temple or Big Game Hunters, there are three games where nobody is mining minerals at all. Welcome to Use Map Settings, the game type that has quietly taken over the Zone.

When Blizzard shipped StarCraft back in 1998, they slipped the Campaign Editor (StarEdit) into the box. Most players poked at it once and went back to fighting over vespene gas. But a stubborn crew of mapmakers kept digging into the trigger system - conditions and actions that let a map do things the designers never intended - and the results are now flooding our custom-game lists.

If you have not tried one, here is the menu that is drawing the crowds:

• Tower Defense - build up your line and stop wave after wave of Zerg before they leak through.
• Bound - no army, no base, just you dodging a maze of scripted explosions. Miss a step and you start over.
• RPG maps - level up a single hero across a scripted quest. Mapmakers drop in the campaign faces we all know, so do not be shocked when Jim Raynor, Sarah Kerrigan, or the dark templar Zeratul turn up as your playable hero.

The trick that makes it all sing is picking Use Map Settings instead of Melee when you host. That tells StarCraft to obey the map's own triggers and forces rather than handing everyone a stock economy. The Brood War expansion poured gasoline on the fire, handing designers a fresh batch of units to bend to their will.

Ready to jump in? It is easy:

1. Open a StarCraft room and start a new game.
2. Set the game type to Use Map Settings.
3. Pick a custom map and let the host explain the rules - every UMS map plays by its own.

Whether you are a Terran, Zerg, or Protoss loyalist, the custom scene has room for you. Fire up StarEdit, cook something up, and bring it to the Zone. We will see you in the lobby.