Exactly. It doesn't have to be a click either. Like before, I was just trying to get it from the screen coordinates.


That's Xtreme gayness. My condition is like this:

For Player 1
Conditions: Player 1 commands at least 1 scanner sweep
Actions:
preserve trigger
center location X on scanner sweep owned by player 1
center view for current player on location X
create 1 terran medic at location X for player 1
display for current player: SCANNER SWEEP DETECTED
remove all scanner sweep for player 1

The detect sweep works, the remove sweep works, but location X will just not center over the sweep no matter what. Why the hell not? SC and Editor are failcrafts man.

Also, I tried that map again, and it crashed again. I never moved the screen at all.

Edit the map so that only the carrier is in there. There must have been a unit that didn't like being cloaked.

Scanner sweep is not a unit with defined X and Y coordinates. Therefore, you cannot center a location on it, but you can detect how many of them there are, as well as remove them with "Remove Unit".

I wish I had discovered this thread sooner; most of your questions would not exist if you realized how limited the BW editor was, and worked around its limitations instead of trying to do what it simply cannot.

If u have good/workable solutions, I wanna see them. I'm anxious to do this stuff so I can finish my engine.

A few more "challenges" have arisen:
8. How can I cast plague at a given location? I was gonna make a defiler there, and run AI script to cast plague, but that script doesn't exist. For some reasons there's AI script to cast swarm, web, and recall, but not other spells?
9. [edit: scarab problem has been solved.]
10. Variable cooldown rate for ghosts: I think i can do this by having ghosts spawn scarabs every x seconds, where x is the cooldown time. Trouble is, not only do I have to cycle through every ghost, I also have to time them each individually... Any help?
11. Is there a way to easily distinguish between depleted geysers and non-depleted geysers? How do you check how much gas is in a geyser anyway? And how would u cycle through them because I think they are all owned by P12 even if u try to give them away.


How does it work then? SOMETHING must have the x and y coords, for it to appear in the right place. Does it create a map reavealer there? Can I possible try to detect the map revealer instead? I tried one or two methods but got no results.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Nov 29 2010, 1:14 am by DrZygote214.

There's no specific script for plague; you'd have to provoke a computer running a melee script to use the ability. I'm not sure on the details on how to provoke plague, but it probably involves a group of high-hp units.

If you can share solutions, it would be helpful because readers can take note of it for future reference.

Cooldown to what? Attack? There's a discussion of that here: http://www.staredit.net/topic/12916/ (in fact, your topic). The answers in that thread are probably the best you're going to receive. In summary, some options are:
- Set opposing units to ally for a temporary time
- Set opposing units to invincible for a temporary time
- Constantly order the ghosts to move to the position they are currently located when you don't want them to attack
- Constantly use the move trigger action to move the ghosts to unwalkable terrain, which will interrupt them from attacking (and taking damage from ranged units)
- Give the ghosts to a neutral player for a temporary time


No, there is no easy way. There is no built-in way, in fact. However, geysers are preplaced units, and you can therefore use EUDs to check their resource amount. If you had an EUD for each geyser, you wouldn't necessarily need to cycle through them all to check their values, but the problem arises if you want to do something at a specific geyser, as EUDs won't leave a reference point. You can throw a location on each geyser and keep track of which geyser is associated with which EUD as a solution to this. If you are short on locations, you can preplace a burrowed unit under each geyser, and cycle through the burrowed units to move one location on the geysers.

Funny you should mention it, but Map Revealers' coordinates also cannot be detected. The scanner sweep's X and Y coordinates are surely stored like any other unit's coordinates, but the problem is that the triggers do not support the scanner sweep unit directly (the original staredit.exe didn't include it in the list of possible units; it was only introduced in the list by extended editors, but said editors do not dictate the actual functionality of conditions and actions).

I'll experiment with that.


Turned out not as complicated as I thought. The idea is, a reaver is a missile, and building a scarab launches the missile. What ended up happening is, building a scarab, and then firing the scarab is the trigger, so u have to order the reaver to attack something in order to fire the missile.
It basically goes like this: if u detect a scarab, center location X over scarab and set a death count to 1. If death count = 1, check if scarab exists over location X. If not, do nothing cuz scarab is still inside the reaver and location X didnt get centered over it. If so, then the scarab is real (not inside the reaver anymore) and X got centered over it, so set death count to 2. If death count = 2, reset death coutn to 0 and remove all scarab and remove 1 reaver at location X, and then do the stuff that launches the missile.

As for the ghosts, yes I'm talking about attack rate cooldown. Ghosts should still be able to move freely, so freezing them is no good and I think constantly moving them to their own location would prevent movement, plus u would have to cycle in that case, handing them to another player and back again, which is not instant and also deselects. So I think setting their atk to 0 and spawning scarabs is a little better, even though u have to cycle among all ghosts too...

11. Is now solved. There is an easy way, at least for what I have in mind. Certain geysers will start out depleted, and others won't. The non-depleted geysers must never deplete, so I have a trigger that sets all geysers owned by P12 to 750. I just make the depleted geysers owned by P9. They don't get handed to P12 at the start. I tested.

Now if it was more realistic, without replenishing geysers, then some would eventually deplete, and then you'd have to try and find them...


Why am I not surprised...

BTW Apos, I did what u said, but Carrier was not one of the units there, so I removed them all and put a carrier. The map crashed instantly, the 4th time in a row

http://www.staredit.net/starcraft/Set_Doodad_State
it's not a complete list, but carriers can't be cloaked.

Starcraft Campaign Editor (which comes with and is accessible inside the game) includes the ability to preplace Map Revealers. Some things in this "Outdated" version aren't found on other versions of map editors. One thing for instance, is that changing Deaths wont change to Memory automatically. (Theres a Memory condition in scmdraft... why do we need to make deaths become memory too? You'd have to do it in a different order to stop this transfer)

Move unit triggers are named differently in some versions, and units have listed how many hits they do

(Firebats specifically say 3 in the editor, even though the damage is only doubled ingame. BTW i thought they did 3 attacks, range 1 range 2 range 3, and something that fits into range 1 (a zergling) would get hit by all 3, but others have said that only large things that are all 3 of 1 range away, 2 range away and 3 range away get hit by all 3... I know lurkers work like the latter.)


Set Doodad state also exists in Starcraft Campaign Editor, but when you go to select unit types, you cant select anything besides normal doodads. The 3 races are there and appear to be collapsed, but contain nothing.


Edit: Also. Have you considered using triggers based on where someone casts dark swarm or disruption web? Based on my limited understanding of for each workarounds, couldn't you have a defiler at each beacon, then have them use dark swarm to target it or something?

8. There's no script for swarm. For no spell there's scripts actually, except web and recall and nuke. And those only exist because Blizzard needed them in their campaign.
9. Yes, that's what you'll have to do.
10. Keeping track of individual units of the same type and player is problematic. So if heroes and different players are exhausted you'll have to follow each ghost with a 1x1 pixel location. I think a ghost can outrun it when walking horizontally. Not sure though, so you'd need to test it. And it'll bug if you put them in transports or let them stack.

EDIT:
Oops turns out my answer came half a day late. I'll keep it here for reference though.

Then Can I follow the carrier with an arbiter, and make the arbiter cloak? I'm guessing no, because I didn't see arbs in the list...but u said it was an incomplete list, so...


Yes but its no good. You need to be able to target anywhere on the map, 256x256. U can't wait to fly out a corsair all the way to the other side. AFAIK, The only spells with global reach are scanner sweep and recall, and wouldn't u know it both are flawed cuz blizzard decided they would be different and not work with location triggers. So I guess it's back to EUDs with screen coords.


Oops, i thought swarm was in there too. Musta got confused because dark swarm is an actual unit u can place, unlike psionic storm and some other spells. If only all spells were like that, like plague.

Yea, so 9 and 11 are solved. 8 and 10 are problems. 10 seems like it's gonna be impossible, but i'm not giving up until i really try it, which I haven't yet cuz I'm worried about 8 and global targeting.

So, 8 is now: How do i provoke plague from a defiler?
Also don't forget 2. How do i calculate the distance between 2 locations? No, I can't order a unit to fly between them and time it, I need something more instant.

arbs can't cloak either.

EUD actions will let you make a unit have instantaneous speed (you click on a point and they move there the next frame) or cast dark swarms/disruption webs across the map.

http://www.staredit.net/?p=oldwiki&s=42
There is no way to make it consistently use plague.

Variable cooldown time for ghosts is really only feasible with EUD actions, and even then it's too hard to do properly. If you use scarabs as the attack, then it's still terrible, because you're changing the game's natural mechanics too much (ghosts don't shoot scarabs, they shoot bullets). If you want variable cooldown on any unit with scarabs, the best is with defilers and a dark swarm which causes a scarab to move. You can cast a bunch of swarms to aim, but it won't shoot unless the virtual cooldown has been met.

I think you have far too high expectations for this map. You ought to rethink what you really want. Just because something is possible doesn't mean it will be easy to do, or fun to play. The idea of playing with ghosts which shoot scarabs doesn't work for me, mainly because they already have a weapon.

To figure out the distance between 2 locations you can either do it mathematically with eud actions and binary countoffs, layer the map with a grid pattern, or have 2 long locations, one horizontal, the size of the map, and one vertical. Center the vertical one on one beacon, then the horizontal on the other. create units in a mobile grid until you know how long both sides are, then use the pythagorean theorem to figure out how long the hypotenuse is. Obviously any air units will ruin this.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 29 2010, 5:56 pm by rockz.

I think there's some misunderstanding here. I want to change ghosts' attack cooldown time because in my game, ghosts are considered people carrying RPGs (rocket propelled grenades). RPGs take several seconds to load and reload, and plus they kill in one hit, so cooldown has to be long, longer than a tanks cooldown. Scarabs are good for all this because they have about the same range as a ghosts attack, and they do splash damage, simulating a RPG pretty good. So I was gonna set a ghosts normal atk to 0, and scarabs would spawn automatically when walking near enemies.

The problem is cylcing through all the ghosts and keeping track of each one's timing. Yea it's probably not possible, but I think it would be an awesome gameplay.

Now, I also have a ballistic missile system, which is what the reaver and scarab detection was for, and also what the scanner sweep/recall and screen coordinates were for, and also why I wanted to cloak carriers (the missile in flight). I got the attack trigger just fine by building a scarab and then having the reaver launch it, but i need a targetting system. Hence, EUDs for screen coordinates, or a scanner sweep or recall, but those spells can't be detected at a location so... I also wanted to spawn plague, so that any air units at the missile impact site would get damaged. And of course I need to calculate the distance between the launch site and target site, so that I can make sure it's in range.

EUDs are the only way, but I have a fundamental question about them. If i use EUDs in a trigger's condition, can it read any data, including shared data among all bnet players? Or will that crash it? Also, if i used EUDs in a condition, can I take any global action, like move location X to unit Y at anywhere? I know that actions cannot set memory via EUDs or the game will crash, but normal actions are okay even if they affect global data, right?

In most cases, the data you will be reading will be static (The place it is stored to will change each time you play the game.). Other times, it will be local (Only readable on one platform and nowhere else.). Other times, it will be shared globally but, unless you are making a very simple thing, it will require a lot of triggers to do very few. In most cases, you should always try to not use EUDs. EUDs are better when you are in a controlled environment where things are predictable.

Too hard IMO. Would be better to use actions to increase the cooldown of c-10 canister rifle to something higher than tanks. That's a simple process, since it's one line.

This is a common problem with starcraft. Cycling is not good for controlled units, and keeping a location centered for anything other than a single unit is subject to unavoidable glitches.

As I said before, I think a dark swarm or disruption web with infinite range would do better, or just a super fast air unit. Screen coordinates are hard to do. Using units is easy. Spawning plague is difficult, and not really that worthwhile. For ground units, you can blow up a bunch of scarabs to deal damage. For air units, you can consider "air" to be immune, since they're above the ground? You can also just use a nuclear missile as the missile itself. It doesn't actually aim correctly (it's always facing up or down) but you can control how fast it moves and everything with euds.

EUDs run fundamentally different than other triggers. You have to think of each trigger having an owner (player 1-8) and a computer (computer 1-8). Thus, if something only is seen on computer 1 (screen position, currently displayed portrait, keypress, text), computers 2-8 won't see it. That means computers 2-8 won't run the trigger, but computer 1 will. If you then create a marine for player 1, computer 1 will have a marine for player 1 (thus player 1 has a marine, and thinks that players 2-8 can see the marine) and computers 2-8 will not have a marine created for player 1. Starcraft then realizes that something is wrong (computer 1 has a marine which is not recognized on any other computers) and drops player 1 from players 2-8's game, and drops players 2-8 from player 1's game.

You can set memory via EUDs, but you need an action enabler. If you don't use the enabler, nothing happens (I think).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 30 2010, 6:06 am by rockz. Reason: they did indeed

How? I don't wanna use EUD enabler, as it won't be publicly playable over bnet. This also means I can't cast dark swarm anywhere, or click anywhere and have a unit instantly go there.

btw i think ur tags got messed up in ur previous post.

First off, I wasn't disclaiming the Map Revealer in that context, but rather Scanner Sweeps, and I was merely offering a reason to its limited support in triggers. Secondly, the original editor does not have some features that have not been included in other editors; some editors are missing some features from the original editor, but they have reasons for that. SCMDraft doesn't have the import/export triggers buttons because it has a text editor where copying and pasting triggers is possible, which is actually more flexible than the original editor's limited function. Citing a glitch in ScmDraft 2's interface is not a valid argument for saying the original editor has features that other editors do not.

I'm not sure why this information is relevant to this topic, but here's more detail: The only editor that renames the Move action (that I know of) is Xtra Editor, because of the action's misleading name that may cause mappers to think it is the "Order" action. Xtra renamed it as "Teleport (Move) Units."

Global actions are okay if you are reading from addresses containing global values. Screen position is local, and global actions will cause desynchronization. The current state or property of a unit, however, is global information, and running actions from that will not have players dropped.

This.

"This"?


this went over my head again. Here's a specific example trigger:

For Player 1
condition: player 1's screen coordinates are 300 x 400 (use EUD for this of course)
action: remove all protoss reavers for all players.

will this desync or no?

"This" as in "This statement is very important and deserves reiteration via quoting."

Absolutely. Screen positions are different for each player, and therefore is a local value. There is no "Player 1" and "Player 2" in memory, just the X and Y for the local computer's screen positioning.

As rockz explained earlier, if you do this, then all Reavers will be removed for the player that has the screen positioned at 300x400, but it will not happen for those other players with different screen positions. Therefore, that player's game is different from the others, and he or she is dropped.

there's a large number of non-shared values. Any non-shared value will desync on a shared action (things like display text and center view are client side only, so can be safely used. There's a number of other things like switches which do not immediately desync either, but you can't use switches to chain a non-shared condition to a shared action). screen location is not one of them, so it will desync, but only if a player has a reaver.

You can use EUD action enabler over bnet, however everyone has to have it. This is not a critical problem, as you can simply link people to the program. IMO, it's worth it to use EUD actions to make the ghosts function perfectly, have the ability to calculate the distance between 2 locations mathematically, and a large assortment of other bonuses which the user won't notice, ever (the user would notice if a workaround were used).

Is EUD enabler just a little program? Do you have to run it and make it log into bnet? If it's not combersome at all, like if it's just a program u open and don't do anything in, then I might use it.