I'm using a Dark Swarm casting system. When you cast it, a Sunken Colony is moved (the teleport trigger) to your Dark Swarm and the Dark Swarm is removed.

The problem? The Sunken Colony is NOT in the middle of the Dark Swarm. It's displaced a bit upwards (like one tile up). This makes it extremely difficult for the player to place the Sunken Colony correctly. Note that normal units do not have this problem.

Any solutions? I have both air and ground units on the map, so I cannot rely on mobile grids. I'm not going to coordinate grid the map either due to both complexity and the number of units/locations it consumes. Still, this causes problems that I really don't want and I'm not sure how to resolve them.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 18 2008, 1:01 am by SelfPossessed.

Perhaps resizing the location that centers on the dark swarm so that it is exactly the same size as a sunken colony might work.

But it's still centered on the Dark Swarm, so the Sunken is moving to the exact same place, so the Sunken is STILL displaced 1 tile up.

center the location, make 9 mutas, remove 4 or 5 of them, center location on a muta, create the building there, remove the rest of the mutas.

Maybe you could do some sort of burrowed unit grid? Burrowed units aren't created in a single spot, instead they still make some sort of grid thing. And it shouldn't interfere with the ground or air units.

EDIT: Nevermind, that's a lie. For some reason I thought creating burrowed units didn't come up in a single spot, which, now that I think about, doesn't make any sense anyway.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 18 2008, 1:55 am by Fwop_.

I believe I recall a system that was able to do this, I think it used a Mature Crysalis to center it properly somehow, but I can't seem to remember how it worked, maybe you create the crysalis and center the location on that?

Does moving a building to a location go by the grid, or just where the location is? If it goes by the grid, that's the problem, since the sunken colony is 3x2, and there's no grid square at 1.5. I've never looked into it, though.

@ Falkoner

I'm not sure how that would work. Hrmm.

@ Fatal

It's gridded alright. But even if it's gridded, it still summons it one tile up, so players have to aim for about where the bottom of the sunken would be.

Perhaps that means it just assumes that the center on the bottom row is the center of the building.

Center on the swarm, Create/move the sunken, create a unit, center on the unit, remove the unit, move the sunken (maybe you need wait(0)'s). That should give you a 1 tile displacement to below.

btw. I don't understand why a ground unit grid system would not work. The player has to aim for a free part of the map anyway for the sunken to be able to be moved/created.

@ NudeRaider

Because there might be room for the sunken, but not room around it. Issues range from terrain to units to doodads.

I don't see how you can make something down a square without mobile grids. Is this good? I didn't see a problem with simple create/remove.

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@ rocks

I seriously wish I could do that, but I'm seriously worried about terrain and other units nearby giving it issues. Now that I think about it though (and after opening the map), using powerups should bypass the unit problem as they go under the unit, but not on top of each other. That leaves terrain. I can test if the powerup got moved in the first place to tell if terrain is in the way, then just not move the sunken then. Hrmm. I think I'll run a few tests on powerups around terrain first. This might be usable depending on how powerups act around terrain objects.

Thanks for the help!

You can't build on top of units anyway. if the units are even slightly displaced, they will be so close to a non buildable area you'll get an error message.

I would use 2 powerups, but that wasn't very accurate. the 2 lings are always created in the same place relevant to the tile it's on, however.
Also, you can easily detect the powerup not in the right spot with an inverted location.

Uhm is there something wrong with what I suggested?

I'd need to use powerups to avoid nearby ground units screwing it up, but they aren't that accurate gridding wise. They also screw up near terrain.

It looks like the player just has to get used to aiming a bit lower. Oh well.

I tested both my way and the simple way. My way was MUCH more accurate. Try making a sunken in the middle of a patch of 8 sunkens both ways. It's fairly lenient so as long as you get the general direction it's fine. Just try it out in your map, and see if it works the way you want it to.

You said the sunken gets placed to high so there must be space below. If there's no space it couldn't get placed anyway.