I'm trying to make it so that spore colonies can cloak.

Is there a way? I tried looking at the wiki and found the page on cloaking, but it's missing the most effective method of cloaking. It goes something like this:

Disable doodad state for [whatever] at [location1]
Wait 0 milliseconds
Enable doodad state for [whatever] at [location1]
Wait 0 milliseconds
Enable doodad state for [whatever] at [location1]
Wait 0 milliseconds
Order [whatever] at [location1] to [location2]
Give 1 [whatever] at [location1] to [whatever player you want it to go to]
Move 1 [whatever] owned by [Player] to [location2]
Preserve trigger (if you want)


This method can cloak a lot of stuff that can't be cloaked with plain old disabling. Also note that some units (ie, high templars) will crash on certain tilesets (ie, installation) but not on others (ie, jungle).
But unfortunately, spore colonies don't seem to be a cloakable unit.

Is there any way I can make a cloaked spore colony? I distinctly remember also being able to cloak creep colonies, but I can't seem to get it to work again.

Not to my knowledge, but if you can still cloak creeps, and if the spores are to be player-controlled, then simply cloak a creep and have a player evolve it.

Well, that's the thing. I can't seem to cloak creeps. I know for a fact that it's possible, but it crashes when I try. Maybe I got the trigger wrong...

I'm curious - does anyone know WHY that method works on things that won't normally cloak?

Also, I don't know any way to cloak a Spore colony. Sorry.

Could be that the objects affected cloak as they disable, but crash when they finish disabling -- and the re-enable commands interrupt that crash?

I have no clue.

Hmm, this isn't exactly relevant to the topic of cloaking spore colonies, but...

I've found that you CAN cloak a Protoss Stargate. However, it will not produce cloaked units, like cloaked larvae do.*

*If you use the disable enable enable trick to cloak a larvae and morph it into something, the resulting unit will be cloaked. This allows you to cloak zerg units that would normally crash, specifically, scourge bats, ultralisks, and overlords (BIG opportunity here, invisible transports could give the effect of units vanishing into thin air, for, say, an "invisibility cloak" spell in an rpg). And no, morphing drones do NOT have a similar effect (cloaked drones will produce normal buildings, and if you interupt a building while it's being built, the drone will come out uncloaked).

I tried a cloaked larva with that method and it worked, but only for maximum of 1 larva unfortunately. As soon as the 2nd larva appears there is a crash.
Do you have a list of units that can be cloaked this way, but were listed as "crashed units" in that guide list?

I did not experience this, but then, I used preplaced or moved larvae instead of disabling them directly at the hatchery.
No, but I can give you some general rules:
1.) Most terran units, both air and ground, can cloak.
2.) Most terrain buildings can cloak, if I remember correctly.
3.) Most zerg units can be cloaked, and those that can't (except for heroes) can be cloaked by cloaking larvae and building them with it. Cloaked devourers can be obtained by cloaking mutalisks and morphing them (I think).
4.) Most zerg buildings cannot cloak, if I remember correctly.
5.) No protoss air unit (besides the observer) can be cloaked.
6.) Most protoss units cannot be cloaked. High templars can be cloaked in jungle and I think badlands, and if you merge two cloaked templars, you get a cloaked archon.
7.) I'm not sure about protoss buildings. I know that at least some of them can cloak (btw, shield batteries have a nice visual effect - the little blue lights don't disappear when they're cloaked ).

disabling twice will crash, I think, and set doodad state only affects the leftmost unit owned by that player in the location. Chances are you disabled the unit twice.

you mean when for the same unit doodad state is disabled? No the only unit was another larva that appeared.
I noticed that after a unit has been cloaked, a strange sprite appears.

Did you use jungle terrain in jungle maptype for the cloaked high templars? because I only get a crash.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 1 2010, 3:55 pm by okeee.

make sure you don't look at the unit being disabled, try other tilesets.

The rock sprite almost always appears when you disable a sprite.

So you created a hatchery, disabled the larva that comes with it, then when the second larva came out, the game immediately crashed (making me wonder how you saw the second larva).

Yes. Quoting myself:




Ok, I did some testing on the larvae thing. I'll attach a test map. I was also doing some other stuff in this map (ie, testing what would happen if I cloaked an assimilator and then destroyed it - the geyser is cloaked, but if you ever detect it, it remains permanently detected. You can still select it and build on it even if you haven't detected it yet.)
I found the followng:
1.) I've demonstrated that cloaked larvae produce cloaked units. However, I also found something I did not know - for units that come in pairs (zerglings and scourge bats), only one of the pair will be cloaked.
2.) A larvae will try to go back to it's original location. It won't die if it goes off the creep. However, if it makes it back to it's original location, SC crashes.
3.) Yes, if a mutalisk morphs, it's new form remains cloaked. You can get cloaked devourers this way.
4.) I had to arrange the trigger so it would move the larva to another location and then the one I wanted it to appear on. If I move it directly the location where the player gets it, SC crashes.

Attachments:

I know what you said, but it doesn't explain why it doesn't work. Other types of jungle map or not viewing disabling did not work. And something I can't explain: if the trigger is preserved, there is a chance that the game immediately crashes (at disabling 1st larva). If not immediately, it crashes when the 2nd or maybe 5th larva appears. Without preserve, it doesn't crash and the first larva gets properly cloaked.

About that rock sprite that appears, is there any way to prevent it from appearing/move/remove it or somehow control it?

no rocksprites cannot be altered in any way.
The way you describe your crash I surmise that the crash occurs when you disable the same larva twice.

You can effectively remove it from the game by disabling in only one area. I think if you have 499 sprites, they won't show up either.

Some frames crash, and in order to stop those frames from displaying, you use the order command. It could be that you're ordering into a direction which has a crashing frame.

You really only need to enable once... Enabling an enabled unit does nothing.


First, look at the Disable Doodad State when used on an appropriate unit ...
When you disable a trap, it will run a specific animation (it "closes") and becomes invisible/cloaked (That's not why they cloak, I don't know why they do. xD) Units that aren't traps don't have this animation specified, but StarCraft tries anyway (computers are not intelligent; it doesn't know not to). That is why some units (tanks, marines, ghosts) go into weird repeating animations and most others simply crash. When you re-enable it, it goes into another non-existant animation. When you give it an order, you interrupt these invalid animations (when you "jump" a disabled marine with zerglings it will walk off the zerglings and stop moving--it no longer will have that order). If the unit isn't already totally screwed up or the game hasn't already crashed, you now have a normal (yet cloaked) unit. Why it works on some tilesets and not all must just be a result of the overflow-animations that it uses.

The 499 sprite limit is in place when loading a map. The actual sprite limit is much higher. The method I'm aware of for removing certain sprites is placing 750 1% HP pylons.


Are you listing the results of just disabling or the results of disable/enable/order?

It used to. xD But then it was patched.

On topic:
Do you know when it crashes?
If it crashes when you disable or enable it, sorry.
If it crashes when you see it, then try using the attack order. (I'm not sure how SC handles the order trigger, though.)

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jan 2 2010, 8:38 pm by FaRTy1billion.

Not sure. Sometimes it would crash a second after the game started, and others I had to look at it before it crashed. It depends on the unit, and I think it might be random for some XD.

I meant for the original question of cloaking a spore colony.

If you're entirely not sure, you can do the triggers in steps...
like first disable it (while it is in fog). If the game crashes immediately you know you can't disable it at all. If it crashes after a while, it may still work.. but not likely. If the game never crashes, then you know you can safely continue.
After you figure that out, try the next step of enabling it. If it crashes immediately then again you're probably out of luck. Same with if it crashes after while or if it doesn't crash at all.
Next you just need to find a way to order it and see if you can look at it at all.

I'd make a list for this like the one I made in the wiki, but the fact that it is so inconsistent makes it hard... I've seen it where on some maps a unit will successfully cloak, but on another that is the same size and tileset the same unit wont. (I actually had a list somewhere... but I don't know if I still do. I remember having archons able to cloak when they mostly don't work.)

Thank you. I've always wondered what the point was to enabling an already enabled unit...

I dunno why you enable it twice either, that's just how I was taught to do it .