K. My latest project involved constant centering between two screens: The area of play, and a menu. It's an RPG where you'll need to access your menu once in a while to manage your character. I needed a way to have the player access their menu screen from the area of play, so some kind of detection was required. At first, I thought of this overly complicated and semi-stupid idea of giving the player a mutalisk to morph when they wanted to access the menu. Placing one of these one the screen for each player would be uber annoying though...

Then I thought of something that might work: UNburrow detection. Rather than detecting when a unit gets burrowed, I'm reversing it to detect when it unburrows. Here's how i'll do it. Whenever the player is allowed to access the menu: A burrowed unit is placed under him and moved to him every 6-8 trigger cycles (dunno how long would be best yet). Whenever you want to access your menu screen, unburrow the unit and it'll detect that it's no longer directly under your main character. This will flip the switch to have the screen focus on menu instead of play, ready to resume after you take care of your stuff.

Pros : Simple to implement. More professional than my previous idea. Hotkeyable.

Cons: Slight choppiness in character during non-combat times. (inventory is disabled otherwise) Might be buggy if the character is going through some tight areas.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 16 2010, 10:28 pm by Norm.

If its under your hero then it will displace the hero when unburrowing.

i dont understand why you wouldnt just use a building. Its so simple and requires such little work...no unit slowing effects either.

current player brings one marine to location set Menu DC to 1...blam center view or display text

and you could use the same building to have an action button. quit trying to reinvent the wheel

as a player i would prefer not messing with the ling so i'm voting last option sorry =/

That's exactly the point, this movement is what I detect and the hero's location can be reset upon exiting the menu.



Doesn't work like that. I needed a method that was mobile on each 12x20 screen, so a hotkey'd building wouldn't work. Besides, players will already have to hotkey their spell-casting building and most will want to hotkey the character. 2 hotkeys is preferred for easy gameplay. They can use the 3rd to hotkey the ling. The reason is that to make the game as professional as possible, i can't give them time at the start to hotkey the thing to act as a switch, plus this isn't anything new, just a rare application for it.

Can't you use the traditional unburrow detection and leave the zergling offscreen, it would remove unit slowdown.

If your hero has any natural detectable ability, use it as your switch, like Ghosts (cloak, nuke).

Also, if you implement a location grid, you can always keep your burrowed unit 1 tile away from your hero without any lag. The location grid will allow you to do all sorts of other cool things too, like spells, animations etc.

Unfortunately, players only have access to the 3 DT's as their characters, so that made things difficult for me. I'm thinking that I for sure need to pop out a demo for this so that people can see how i'm applying it because perhaps I am not too great with explaining it here.

It would make much more sense to just have an off-screen Zergling that the player would hotkey in the beginning, and if they somehow manage to lose the hotkey, then I guess they'd have to go back to some area where they can manually access their menu at. Maybe have a multitude of checkpoints like this around the map?

Have the zergling off the screen and have the start location on it in case you lose the hotkey. You can hold f2 to get the hotkey back.

Take a look at Deep Six as it carries a similar system.

Now that I've finally bothered to read your post allow me repopulate your lists:

PROS:

• Simple to implement
  
• Hotkeyable
  

CONS:

• Unburrowing zergling will displace the hero
  
• Choppiness in movement, slowing
  
• Not-insignificant delay in detection
  
• Aesthetically unpleasing
  
• Players have to reburrow manually before it will work again (not a con if that's your method of leaving menu)
  
• Players could easily click on zergling by accident when meaning to click on enemy or themselves
  

Perhaps you haven't really thought this through; if the zergling is updated (moved to the character) every 6-8 cycles, then the zergling won't be "directly under your main character" in-between that update time (5-7 cycles). Your method can only work on the cycles that the zergling is moved to the unit, when the zergling is fully unburrowed and is displaced by the hero (this would look ugly in-game, in my opinion). In all you have the hotkey-select-and-press-'U' time, latency-order time, unburrow animation time, and update zergling waiting time built up against you.


Why? I see no reason for this.

They can use the 3rd to hotkey the building PearS suggested, too.

I fail to see where this makes it anymore professional (considering all the disadvantages, I think it would make it less professional). You'd have to give them time to hotkey the spell-casting building anyway.

I'm not sure what you're referring to, using a building or using unburrowing. Either way, neither are rare or new.

Ultimately, I have to go with option 2 in the poll, considering all the disadvantages.

The system might work properly if you simply move the Zergling under the hero and immediately off of him after having detected that the ling is there/not there. Then you wouldn't have a ling in the physical game world for less than the time it takes your triggers to detect whether he's there or not. It's the same principle as burrow detection.

I'm going to agree with kaias on this one.

Couldnt you just use a small square, detect that the zergling moved out of it, move him back in, and put them to menu screen? This would also allow you to do the same thing to get them back to game screen.

Immediately off to where? why bother with that at all if it isn't tagged to the Hero? If you do this every cycle then it will cause massive choppiness and slow to the Hero; I assume this is what you were trying to subvert with your suggestion. If it isn't tagged to your Hero (like it shouldn't be) then you may as well just do real burrow detection on the zergling.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 16 2010, 5:09 pm by Kaias. Reason: Typo

Well, obviously not every cycle; as Norm suggested himself, at a decent interval that doesn't allow for character slowdown/choppiness.

It seems to me like we're patching holes in a boat that's already ten feet under.

=) Okay, I thought this out and you guys are trollin bad or something. I'll get a demo out within the next week and we'll see how well this works. I realize that it'd have to not be hotkeyable, I dunno why I thought it was but yeah basically when the unburrow detection fires, the screen is moved to the menu screen and you do not see what happens to the hero. So, I just have to remove the now unburrowed unit, replace the hero where he was when the menu is accessed and that's all there is to it. The burrowed unit is recreated when the menu is exited.

Finally, I already explained that I have a system worked out (didn't even have to think of it, it's the same one I used for CW in HS) that will minimize errors in accidental menu opening and also severely lessen choppiness. Also, since the menu will only be available in times of non-combat, you won't have to worry about the burrowed unit getting in your way when you must fight and there will be zero choppiness during times of combat because of this.

So, I guess this can be closed and we'll continue discussion once I show this more accurately in the DEMO.

Awesome, this could sort of be a way to make non-vultures be able to lay spider mines, or you could take it even further and have this be like a spell that summon guys. Or you could have like a group of all different burrowed units under your hero and depending on which one you unburrow, something cool happens. Cool.

Just every time you move the burrowed unit (or group) under your hero, move a small location onto your hero as well and check to see if the burrowed unit is there. Easy

Hang on, I'm about to upload a demo so you guys can see what I mean.

Uh, why put the ling under the hero?

Okay, anyone who did not understand what I was talking about earlier can download this Demo where I have constructed the Interface of my soon-to-be RPG. Play as Player 1.

Features:
Movement between 4 adventure screens.
Toggle between Menu Screen and adventure screens.

•Unburrow unit under your character to access menu.
♦Walk toward edge of screen to go to next one.

Attachments:

If you use an offscreen method you would increase detection speed by a lot, remove unit slowdown, and you could hotkey the zergling. The only drawback is having to hotkey it in the beginning, which isn't that bad.

I also don't see what's appealing about having different screens center viewed, it's not like you'd decrease any locations for location grids, but just have annoying screen flickers when you move the mouse to the side.