i made a defense map, where waves of enemies spawn and attack the players' base, and the players can buy units and upgrades with money gained from killing enemies.

however, after a while, the difficulty of the waves can't get much higher because adding more enemies per spawn makes the unit unplaceable error. ive already used hero units to make the enemies tougher in later waves, and that bought me some time, but now i really need a way to get more units to the players' base.

i did some research and found the unit sprite stack trigger, where a computer player moves unit sprites to a location etc. and at the end it makes stackable units out of the sprites.

i need some way to activate this through triggers, so i can have massive stackable waves of enemies, but i dont know how to spawn unit sprites with triggers. as far as i know, the only way is to put them in the map at the start with SCMdraft then use them.

short version: how to spawn unit sprites with triggers?

thoughts?

You could try this: http://www.staredit.net/topic/8261/
It's probably the easiest way. But otherwise have a look at the wiki.

Or, after that wave moves out of the location, spawn the next wave, or use the 'wait' trigger (not a good idea if hyper triggers are enabled)

You can't create unit sprites...however, you could do what zany suggested and create some powerups under your spawn, for your stacked waves.
IIRC, unit sprites act as regular units once they're in-game, so I don't think this would work.

You CAN have sprites ingame, that stack and also act like normal units, but like I said, for what you want, creating powerups is easier.

sounds like the best idea, testing this right now, thank you, i might post my map when ive added some more waves (theres only 20 right now)

EDIT: works but they dont stay stackable, still trying to find a way to make stackable ground units ingame with triggers

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 13 2009, 1:18 am by durbeans.

To put it short, you can't. I hope to God that you know unit stats can be edited. Judging by this...
...it seems that you don't. You can just have different units attack the players, and they gradually get stronger and stronger. Perhaps add some bosses that use spells as well to spice things up.

im not new to mapmaking, just new to this website. i have the first couple waves with just normal units, slowly getting more numerous ie. zerglings->hydras->defilers etc, and after all the unit types are cycled it uses hero units, which have their stats edited to be like bosses...

after a bunch of waves theres not much i can do to make it challenging, players can just line walls with siege tanks and valkyries and kill everything, so im thinking i need to make another computer player, maybe with upgraded armor or speed upgrades bought, and spawn their units instead after a while, or make stacked waves

stacked waves would look cool, so im just asking if anybody knows a feasible way to do this

If the units are stacked and you have sieged tanks, it's not gonna make much of a difference. You could make the enemy hp like 1000, and modify it to be higher as the levels progress.

In addition to what craftstar mentioned, if you can spare a couple of computer players, you can also change which computer is spawning and have the armor upgrades of each computer increasing in difficulty.

i mentioned that i might have to do this in my last post

also, was playing around with the non-sprite stack concept, made an interesting test map if anybody's interested...

still trying to get it to work without unit unplaceable errors yet still spawn more units than usual

Attachments:

If you don't like the unit unplaceable errors, create the units somewhere else, then move them to where you would normally create them. If there is no room, they won't move. If you spam the move action, they will move as soon as there is room.

You can also set the units' HP to increasing values to buy yourself even more time. Wave 1 can have 1 % HP, wave 2 can have 2 % HP and so on.

Already suggested.
Is the map going to last forever? Is there a certain point that the players win? Have some events that happen within the course of the map that negatively effect the players. For example, a boss comes, famine occurs and everyone's Marines die, all units on low ground die because of lava rushing in, enemy units create a tunnel which leads to the center of your base where Hydralisks, Zerglings, Infested Terrans, etc. unburrow and attack you, flying units drop off a few guys in your base, etc. Just some ideas to get you going.

i think its doing alright, ive put in waves 1-20 out of 100, theres 2 player slots and a neutral computer slot, so im thinking il just use the last 5 slots for increasing difficulty.

its nice because 5 slots = 20 each for 100 total rounds anyway, but if it starts getting easy near the end, especially if players get all the upgrades, then il add in some stacked waves.

also, lil-inferno, those are good ideas, but im making this map more straight up defense than rpg. i suppose itll be like any other defense map except itll be mostly isometrical instead of the usual rectangular maps/defense paths

when its done il post it, also thanks for all the advice tips etc everyone