I thought this would be common sense, but apparently Blizzard wasn't on the same train of thought when they designed this trigger.

I simply wanted to display current ore/gas, and possibly number of units on an observer version of a melee map. The problem is, even when setting this trigger to apply only to Force 2 (Observers), it still displays for the players as well, which is not good. I just want the observers to be able to monitor the players resource amounts during the game, but this doesn't seem to work. Is there some way to modify the trigger to only display for certain players?

With leaderboard its not possible.
Leaderboards are always puplic and can be seen by everyone

That's the unfortunate reality of it.

You could have the player select which player to view the resources of, and then set the observer's resources to that player.

If I set it so the observers can select a player to view resources of, that limits them to one player correct? Is there any other creative way to display resources? Something like setting neutral units like flags or powerups to display it is out of the question since a player could fly over the area and see it as well.

It's a real downer that even after all these years, spectating games hasn't really improved at all

You could always display text.
Maybe in 10second intervals or something. Annoying though.

A variation of what you just ruled out would be to be that you place mineral blocks somewhere and set it to the respective amounts (doesn't need a lot of space). Put it in a spot that is not supposed to be part of the playing field.
To prevent detection by players you could set it to 0 whenever a player brings a unit close to them.

And you shouldn't expect too much from Blizzard. The game was never meant to be updated and kept up to date in design and functions. If you're looking for that buy newer games. Blizzard occasionally added small features but rarely something that required a rewriting of the core engine.

I agree when it was released, you couldn't expect much from Blizzard. But given StarCraft is the sole reason the popularity of e-Sports took off, in addition defining Blizzard as a leader in the industry of competitive gaming, you'd think they'd support the concept more than they do. More people spectate SC games in a year than watch the Superbowl, so it's really surprising Blizzard has never further built upon that success.

Statistics aside, it's a good point. But any company should in theory update their product when it's popular but needs adjustments. Unfortunately Blizzard barely does that for in-game bug fixes as it is.

What you're wanting done is probably done in a hack of some kind, but of course that can randomly get you banned, however you use it. It's just a lot of work to do a good version of what you want in ums, but it can be done if you edit the map and use some switches (figurative, not trigger), like civs to a pad to make one player's resources the same as your own, or just do what Nude said.
by map, i meant terrain, like some korean obs do for a "king obs"

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 24 2008, 10:42 pm by StrikerX22.

Yeah, I'll experiment around with some things. This map is for a sponsored melee tournament, so 100% of the map's area is in use, which rules out anything physical. I might have to come up with some form of text triggers. Thanks for the help!

One player at a time.

Well, I'd recommend you to have a dropship selection menu for observers as long as you have not got any free space for other selection systems. And in my opinion dropship is most handy one. Also, you can make a mode when the board automatically switches to the player who have the most resources (in wide range: most ore, most gas, most summary and so on), probably indicating the time of switching with the text or showing the nubmer of a player as a unit limit.

An Idea! You can display relative % of the players resource to the players summary resources (or to the sum of res for all players) as a HP of units which are inside of the observer's dropship. They wont see the precise % but it could provide usefull info on the whole.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 24 2008, 11:30 pm by Wormer.

Dropships can be seen by the meleeing players, which he doesn't want.

What is then? What is bad in a dropship being seen? He haven't said this

ADDED:
Though dropship system could be made not using temporary land area, it is better to have at least an 1x1 square for dropships... If he dont want dropships to be seen he may make it when the dropship is comming close to player's units it explode/teleport to another place or something like this...

Are you sure you cant spend an 1x1 tile of land for a dropship?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 24 2008, 11:51 pm by Wormer.

Yeah, I think you're a little too strict. I don't see how 4 mineral blocks (1 for minerals, 1 for gas, for each player) placed over cliff or water would disrupt gameplay.
Honestly I think this would be quite elegant and can be combined with the unit proximity detection I mentioned.
Remember to also deactivate it if any player commands a scanner sweep.

The real problem I see with that is that players could deliberately (or not) block that display by parking an air unit over it or something.
Maybe in that case you could switch to a backup plan, for example using the minerals/gas of the observers to show the players' resources. Here's how you could implement that:
A leaderboard or countdown timer or the unit counter of the obs (if you're okay with invincible air units for obs) could show the obs whose resources are currently displayed. And it automatically cycles through the players, so you don't need a chooser.
For example
countdown timer = 10 --> Player 1; = 20 --> Player 2. - OR -
1/0 units (e.g. dropship, which is alway teleported to a corner) --> Player 1; 2/0 --> Player 2

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 26 2008, 3:00 pm by NudeRaider.

As I said, these are melee maps. While it's feasible to set aside an area for a ban system, it's a bit different with something like this. I can't restrict a player from using any portion of the map, so there's no way for me to prevent a player from seeing the opponents resources. Even with a trigger that clears the resource count when a player comes near the dropship/civ/minerals, the player could still cancel the system entirely by leaving his unit there, such as an Overlord, which would defeat the purpose of the system to begin with.

There are a lot of creative solutions that could work, but each has some form of drawback to it, and the way these maps will be used I simply can't use anything that has a chance of affecting gameplay, even if the chance is miniscule.

I'm just going to go old fashioned and add a resource counter to the VOD. Thanks for all the help though. Hopefully somebody else can use this information.

The combination of solutions I presented has no chance to disrupt gameplay. If I overlooked something please correct me and give a reason instead of just stating it would.

Your argument about players could defeat the system is flawed, because somehow you seem to have overlooked that I suggested switching to the next best solution I see. Or is that backup method just not convinient enough for the obs in your opinion?
Besides, the point is to place the minerals somewhere away from any battles. Every map has such spots. And since you have a backup plan there's no point for players deliberately blocking these spots.

These maps are for a tournament with a prize pool over $30,000, and will be broadcast on TV. The only observer would be a referee, and anyone watching the game afterward would have a resource display anyway, so the in-game resource display would be solely to help keep the referee informed of what's going on. However, I am not allowed to add anything that could potentially affect game play. In this case, displaying resources via minerals or units, blocking off areas of the map from air travel, or anything that will distract people watching the after-game video feeds, such as seeing a blip on the map randomly appear and disappear every time an air unit approaches (such as disabling a resource counting unit temporarily when a player passes).

If there's no solution that doesn't involve a physical object on the map, then there's no solution in this case. So while every UMS mini-game style map may have spots to do this, no professional melee maps do. Again, thanks for the suggestions though. I can implement them into a B.Net version of the maps after the tournament.

Well if mineral blocks embedded in a cliff with 0 minerals are going to distract players in your opinion, then so be it.
But my backup plan is non physical:
Minerals/Gas of the obs represent the resources of 1 player, and are switching to the other player in 10s intervals.
Use the leaderboard, the countdown timer, or a display text action to show the obs whose resources he's observing.

I quickly set up a map where the referee would have one dropship that control his options- Monitor Player 1 or Player 2 Resources, and toggle Player 1 and Player 2 vision. This allows him to use the dropship as a camera if he wants. The dropship won't affect anything except that the players can see it moving around if it is within his field of vision. If there is an understanding that the referee has a dropship to regulate then it shouldn't affect anyone.

If that isn't acceptable for the circumstance, then you could use it for less formal events. Either way the example map is there and available.

You know what? I get the distinct feeling he should have posted in the melee forum. We UMS mappers don't seem to understand his needs.

Hehehe, silly Raider, share the resources, like when you mine 8, get 2 instead. Use binary countoffs to compare

What you CAN do is have the option to switch it on and off, like move a civilian to a location or something. When that civilian gets to the beacon, you subtract all of the players resources, add death counters as you go, then add those death counters back as minerals. But, if you do it like this:



^(Wtf? Broke?)

It won't work. Instead, use binary count offs to make it instant. If you would like, I could create a simple map that could do this for you.