I'm having trouble getting stacked and cloaked Hydras down; the map keeps crashing. I can do the Disables/Enables and Order move part just fine (I've gotten stacked Ghosts/Firebats/DTs/Marines before without problems). The major problem is getting a Disabled Hydralisk Sprite on the map without crashing Starcraft.

What I've Tried:
1) Sometimes, by playing a Starcraft game for a minute or so first before playing the stacked Hydras test map, it will won't crash. However, this is extremely inconsistent.
2) I was told to try making the sprite owned by a neutral player, but I haven't met with success there either.

Any advice would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

In general you must not have vision to the hydra while cloaking.
When you successfully cloaked the hydra it's usually still unstable. It seems to have one animation frame that is crashing. Ordering the hydra at all times or keeping it attacking or idle might prevent the crashing. You could try that.

Or you try a safe method: Arbiter cloak. Create an Arbiter above a cloaked hydra and order the hydra the same time.
The Problem is that the hydra will only be cloaked as long as it's not burrowed.#

Also I don't know how this would affect stackability.

Stacking involves disabled sprites. The disabled Hydralisk sprite is what's causing the problem. I've tried just putting the disabled Hydralisk sprite in a map with no triggers and with no vision for the player and it would still crash. Again, I can get it to work SOMETIMES (playing another game first for a few minutes seems to help, but it isn't 100%), but I really need to know exactly what conditions I need to meet to prevent the crashing in the first place.

As for the cloaking aspect, I didn't realize that there was an animation frame that causes a crash. Does this happen when the Hydralisk is idle? It's possible that when the disabled sprite idles and hits that particular frame, SC crashes. If that's the problem, then I'm not sure what I'm going to do...

For the arbiter cloak, I thought that involved a patrolling arbiter and having the Hydralisk unburrow the moment the cloaking field touches it. If that's the method you're mentioning, it won't work as I'm dealing with sprites, not the unit itself. If there's a method that doesn't involve burrowing, then it's doable.

Hydralisk sprites crash the map immediately, however, disabled hydralisk sprites only crash it when looked at, so that may not be the problem, as often enabling them to stack them causes them to no longer crash when looked at, however, I think I recall trying to cloak a hydralisk and having that crash, so either one could be the source of your problem.

To single out the problem, try doing each one without the other, and that should tell you which is doing the crashing.

disabled/enabled larva sprites make any zerg unit stackable. If you can get the larva to cloak as well, you've got it, (but you'll have to figure out how to make a computer make them or just let the player make them himself.

Not the truest statement. The one thing I would like to know is if you want them moveable .


Without crashing? I thought they would but....

A while back, Loveless showed me a map with a weird sprite, that when disabled turned into a larva, or when placed, looked like something but in the map, it was a larva, I forget which (sorry!). Let me look it up and I will see what I can find.

Thanks for the help so far!

Falkoner:
I have tried just disabled Hydra sprites and it crashes. I then tried stacking it without cloaking, and that worked sometimes (it still crashed on occasion). However, it's possible that the disabled version of the sprite has the missing animation frame that the disabled sprite randomly goes into, so it could still be the same problem.

rocks:
Are they any easier to cloak/stack than Hydras? If they are more stable (the wiki lists them both as unstable) then I can just have the player morph them in order to start the game (I just need 11 of them). I would prefer if I could stack Hydras directly though, it feels more professional that way.

Epoch:
Well, I want 11 stackable cloaked Hydralisks that can attack. They must be movable via the move/teleport trigger, but they don't have to move normally. If you have another solution that does this, I'm all ears!

You can do the cloaking as I said. Create a regular hydra burrowed and an Arbiter at the same time and immediately order the hydra to move. Creating an Arbiter is equivalent to entering the cloak range - as in you have to enter a cloaking field. That makes the timing much easier.
This could be done for a computer player with burrowing enabled then give them to the players which have burrowing disabled.

For the stacking move the hydras to walkable null tile with unwalkable terrain around and a walkable tile nearby. Order them to the walkable tile and they will start moving. As soon as they reach the walkable tile they cannot go anywhere else and thus will start stacking as soon as more hydras come.

No unit sprite involved, no danger of crashing.

NudeRaider:

That sounds too good to be true!

I'm a bit unclear as to the setup of the unwalkable terrain and the walkable terrain part (where to position the tiles and which tiles to use). If it isn't too much trouble, could you make a quick example map of just the stacking (no need for the cloaking, I understand that)? I'm probably going to be using the generic jungle tileset.

Thanks.

Actually I have never done it myself so I would have try around a bit myself. But from what I've gathered it's not hard.
The trick is that units that are on walkable null can walk onto unwalkable terrain. But once they reach walkable terrain they cannot anymore.
I'm not sure but from what I remember there's only 1 walkable null tile and that would be the one one the very right in ScmDraft. (A pure black tile - that's what we call null tiles)

So you just have to put a location over the null tile, have another normal tile some spaces away and all around put unwalkable terrain. Give the order to move to the walkable tile and that's all.

NudeRaider:

I just tried it. It gets the Hydras to stack in that one spot, but they aren't "stackable." As in, they try to unstack immediately (they can't since it's only one tile) since they're out of room. When you try moving them away (move/teleport trigger), they're automatically unstacked as well. This won't work for me.

It looks like I'm back to sprites.

EDIT: PROGRESS

This is freaking me out. When I play a single player game in single player mode (must not be the campaign, you must make a custom game), then log into bnet, then play the map with the sprite, it works fine. It's pretty consistent.

The problem? I tried doing it with one other person. He also played a single player game in single player mode, logged into bnet, then joined my game. It worked for me, but crashed him.

I'm at a loss. Damnit. The map I'm using to test is attached. It only stacks the 11 hydras. Again, try playing a game in single player mode (non campaign), quit, then play this. It shouldn't crash.

Attachments:

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 9 2008, 9:30 pm by SelfPossessed.

Here's my attempt. I don't have any experience in this, I just know it's possible, and I got it to work. It makes a few rock sprites (presumably because the larvae are unstable). As long as you hide this from the player, it works fine. If you look at the larvae as they are enabled, it might crash. If you order the larvae, it might fix the crashing problem. Unfortunately, if you burrow, they regain their collision box, and I don't know how to make them cloaked.

Attachments:

Thanks rockz. That appears to be MUCH more stable than Hydralisk sprites (though I bet someone out there knows how to get Hydralisk sprites stable). I'll just force the players to morph the Hydralisks early on (I only need 11) in order to start the game.

Now, they aren't cloaked, and I don't know how to get them cloaked.

It's just the disable enable enable disable enable enable trick. I just got my stacked cloaked hydras that don't crash.

Thanks!

First issue with this is that as soon as units cloaked that way burrow, they lose the cloak, whereas, ones cloaked via the disable enable enable method are perma cloaked.
Second issue is, like he said, while they are "stacked", you cannot simply order them to walk like a normal unit and have them remain stacked.


So Hydras stacked from larvae don't crash? That seems odd to me.. Oh well, at least it worked.

Looking back, the disabled->enabled larva create a rock sprite, which crashes you if you look at it when the enabling occurs. This also forces you to use up a sprite on each section, and do the enabling out of view.

Alright, not to fear... Eh, what the fuck, that sounds gay. Anywho...

If you want to go straight from sprite to Hydralisk without the Larva medium, you need to be using Pure Unit Sprites. You were most likely using a regular unit sprite. In that old map of mine, Darkness Defense, I used Pure Unit Sprites for my Larva and that's what allows them to be disabled/enabled and etc without crashing.

So... I'm not sure what the code/number is for Pure Hydralisk Sprites, but that's what your going to need to look into.

Other than that... Just take my pure unit sprites from Darkness Defense, in the DLDB, copy and paste, then make the player create 11 hydralisk himself.