Hello,

I'm currently working on a map, and as usual, feel bombarbed with answerless problems. I'd be much in debt if someone out could provide me a quick solution to the following problems:

1) Acquiring vision of a normally uncloakable unit, such as a building or powerup, so that later it cannot be seen, all that without clearing fog of war.
I've first followed the Wiki's Vision Mechanics guide, but am not quite satisfied with the result. According to the article, vision updates every 50 trigger cycles, or more precisely at the 50th cycle. To achieve this effect so far, I have 2 triggers: 1 to turn ON vision for Player 8 and disable the unit I want, the second to turn OFF vision for Player 8. Initially I placed both triggers at 30th and 31th cycle respectively, but something undesirable came along, sometimes I'd get vision from 1 or 2 units from Player 8, effectively revealing portion of the map, which is not my intention. I've managed to amend this by moving both triggers to 1st and 2nd cycles, but I'm not confident as to whether this solves the problem or simply mitigates the probability of getting vision of one or two units. Any ways to safely achieve this?

2) Similar, but this time I want to get vision to a certain area, without ever it being possible for the player to notice there is a unit there or it showing on minimap.
Placing and removing unit at the 50th cycle works, however, it's not quite perfect, as for a very short fraction of a second, the vision updates before the unit is created, causing the cleared area to blink. I want the vision over said area to be constant at all times. Anyone know of a solution?

3) How can you inherit upgrades from another player? I'm quite sure this is done in one of the latest Desert Strike Night versions.

4) Removed bunkers but still shooting.

I'm sure you've all seen it in games like spawn defense or bunker defense. How can I do that?

5) What is the best map protector out there? I'll need an update for those, as currently the ones I have are pretty old I think.
Also, is there any guide to the actual process of corrupting map data, so I can maybe come up with a protector of my own?

6) Fairly simple and straightforward question, what unused player is used to boost unit speed and fire rate using map revealer? I saw a topic once about, but can't find it anymore.
And since we're on the topic, is there a list out there with all unused players and the effects you can from placing them on map? I remember seeing such list a long time ago, but it disappeared.

7) How do you enable unattached addons?

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For the most part, I've already tried google and search but to no avail.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Sep 9 2010, 3:02 pm by Mad.

7. Preplaced unattached addons are enabled. You cannot enable unattached addons in-game, only preplaced ones are active.

6. Player 15 protoss scarab will make everything two times faster (Side effect of units losing auto-targeting, such as lurkers not firing until commanded to do so). Map revealer will boost animation speed but not actually affect game speed.

5. Use FaRTy1billion's TinyMap2. It not only reduces your map size immensely, but also protects it from almost all known map unprotectors. However, keep in mind that all protected maps can simply be opened with StarEdit or StarForge with minimal loss of information, and map protection is unnecessary in any case.

4. Make the units enter a bunker, then use the Move Unit trigger to move the bunker away to some other location. You can stack a bunch of buildings in the corner and remove them to allow your own bunkers to stack, but that's not a necessary step to get shooting removed bunkers.

3. If player A has X upgrade researched for some unit Y, give unit Y to player B and player B will inherit upgrade X from player A.

1-2) Here's the topic where I discovered this: http://www.staredit.net/topic/6771/. There's also a sample map there which works perfectly IIRC.
For cloaking buildings, you want to have your normal counter count up to 50. Make sure you don't turn on vision until after the first trigger run. This is how vision works, or at least I think:

This is more or less an approximation. Since hyper triggers run every other frame, we simply have to leave a unit there on frame 98 and take it away on frame 100 (ie, hyper trigger 49, then 50).

Now that means to cloak stuff, we want to turn on vision as fast as possible, and turn off vision as late as possible. I'd go ahead and turn on vision on frame 2 (hyper trigger 1) and turn it off on frame 98 (hyper trigger 49). That way you can cloak every unit. If you use blind, this is all thrown out the window, however, as blind updates vision and resets all timers.

I apologize if it's hard to grasp, but the important thing to know is that you can usually move around on which DC things run at, to fix the effect. If you're getting vision and you don't want to, either move the triggers earlier or later.

3) Upgrades are player dependent, but research is automatically given to a player if he currently doesn't have it researched (disabled does not matter). Upgrades like attack and armor are NOT transferred, and can't be transferred. Let's say you want to give player 1 all the wraith upgrades (cloak and energy).
Create 1 wraith for player 2 (who has cloak and energy upgraded already)
Give that wraith to player 1. Now player 1 has cloak and energy upgrades.

4) There's 2 ways: you can disable the bunker which cloaks it (IDK if they still shoot though), or you can simply MOVE the bunker somewhere else. If you move the bunker after it has been loaded, the units will still think the bunker is there, and the overlays will go on the place the the bunker used to be. Should you want to automate this after building a bunker, you can detect when the bunker is built, create the units to go in the bunker, wait a few frames for it to be loaded (or wait for the units to be brought to the 1x1 location centered on the bunker), then move the bunker somewhere else. If you want to save physical space in the map, you can stack a bunch of bunkers, or any other building off to the side, then remove one, and move the bunker on top of all those buildings. When a building is removed, the terrain is marked as "buildable", even though you can't walk on it. That means you can move buildings via triggers on top of the stack.

5) Certainly the whole reason you're asking these questions is that some thoughtless mapper wanted to protect his map, and then you couldn't open it up to see how they did it? Personally, I'm a no source mapper, so I can't help you in corruption, but I can help you in compression: tinymap2 is a compressor which puts a weak protection on the map (starforge can open it, but scmdraft can't) and compresses everything down to almost the smallest it can be by removing useless chunks, and losslessly ordering/editing triggers, as well as compressing some other chunks more than normal.

6) Player 14 or 15.

7) Preplaced addons will keep their player. Alternatively, you can "attach" an addon by preplacing them, then linking them later. One way to do this is to place 2 nydus canals, which will then be linked, then change the ID in starforge to the addon ID, and the other one to the building ID. If you utilize your vision mechanics, you can then prevent the player from ever seeing the building, and thus lifting off and ruining the link. Then you can give the building to give the addon.

If you need test maps for anything, I can point you to them a little better, as I have numerous maps which do everything you've asked about.

For question 2, I believe you can simply create a map revealer for that location, unless you want to reveal an area that moves around. As for 1 I do not actually know what you meant by "1) Acquiring vision of a normally uncloakable unit, such as a building or powerup, so that later it cannot be seen, all that without clearing fog of war.". Could you please elaborate?

For 2 he wants a mobile unit, and probably can't use map revealers because they're somewhere else, or map revealers are air units. For 1 He means if you disable a beacon/bunker/barracks, how do you get it to look invisible and make the sprite disappear without revealing any of the undiscovered area of the map.

Handy... I never tried.
Thought it'd be something more complex involving triggers.


Yes, this might be just what I'm looking for. Does scarab speed boost affect all units or only those placed after scarab? Basically, what I need for my map is for 1 single unit to move/attack faster than others.


The problem with this method is that you leave the unit visible to the player if he keeps his camera on the spawn location, it's a short time, but it's still there.


I see. I take scarab damage count as research then. A pity. Would be nice to be able to inherit attack/armor upgrades from others.


That'd be awesome.


rockz said it. I want to have cloaked beacons, powerups, but for that I need to give the player vision for them, which would inevitably reveal portions of the map which are mean to remain obscured. I've managed to achieve this by placing 2 triggers on 1st and 2nd trigger cycles, but I'm not sure whether it fixes the problem. Applying the same method on later cycles (31,32) sometimes get me portions of the map revealed for some reason. I'm not sure whether lowering trigger time fixes this or simply reduces the chances of getting random fog spots cleared. I'd appreciate a safer solution, if there's one, though i must say I haven't run into any problems with my current trigger.

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Thanks for all the replies folks.

Changing the trigger time to what rockz posted will fix the problem entirely.

Couldn't you cloak the powerups in a location that isn't important, then use "Move Unit" to move them to the appropriate locations?

1. I don't really understand.

2. Map Revealers?

3. Only Ability Upgrades can be "inherited". This can be done simply by giving a unit from a player that has the ability to the player that hasn't.

For example, when player 1 presses a button to get the "Cloaking" ability for all his ghosts. What actually happens is you give Player 1 a ghost from a computer that has cloak researched, and then remove the ghost.

4. >>>> http://www.staredit.net/starcraft/Bunker_Disabling_and_Stacking <<<< You make me sad that no one noticed this. (I never liked the way David separated "Concepts" with "Tutorials")

5. Tinymap is a good protector as long as it doesn't fuck up your map.
Map Protection isn't very important unless you have a good reason. The way things are right now, as long as you're map is popular, it is too hard to have anyone steal your map.
The only protector I used was Uberation.

6. p15 - Must be first unit placed?

7. Aristocrat ninja'd

6.)
p15 Scarab is mostly used. You can use interceptor, too. P15 Map Revealer speeds up something, too (only animations, I think).
I think P20 units corrupt terrain display.

Unit has to be placed first else strange things can happen to the units placed before. For the p15 scarab method it would be: immortality, immobility, does not play any animation on it, visible and selectable through fog, does not attack). But some things will crash like 4 shooting units in bunkers. Some things won't work, like some idle units won't attack without any order.

4.)
What rockz said. BUT:
You disable the Bunker's doodad state to disable the unload/load button. Also it cloaks the Bunker. This is optional, but normally done.
You have to move the Bunker away, so there is only 1 way to achieve that effect.

1)Lost Souls. It should have it, but I don't know which version Ultimo submitted. Search for "vi+" in the triggers.
2)Vision.scx. Made it a while ago, but it should be nearly perfect. Every 300 frames, you'll see the flash of the burrowed ling.
3)Too simple for me to find a link.
4)Random Bunker Defense. moves bunkers to a stack, replaces bunker with a random building.
6)Mapspeed v1.0
7)Walk up to a machine shop and it's given to you. Also includes "gate" sound effect.

My Random Bunker Def map is protected and uses an outdated system. At least today, I know how to make it better.
I made a short example map where you can find the simplest way to achieve that effect.

edit:
I've uploaded a commented version this to the database.
HERE IT IS!

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 10 2010, 10:36 pm by Ahli.

3) I tested all possibilities with a map (attached). I found out that all inheritable upgrades all one-time upgrades (excluding burrow and consume, archon meld and dark archon meld), spells, and scarab damage (regardless of its level).
5) You don't really need to, all protectors can be unprotected.
6) Yea I used to read that too...Like all of these guys said, place a scarab for P15 FIRST and it'll double the speed. If you place units BEFORE placing the scarab, I think it freezes the units or something, and no speedup.

Attachments:

I'm pretty sure that burrow is a transferable upgrade. Were you using a lurker or hero unit for the test?

All "Researches" are transferable. Some "Upgrades" are transferable, but not all. The distinction is made clear in the editor via which menu it is in, and in a single player game offline, two cheats will make distinctions as well. "Something for Nothing" does all "Upgrades". "Medieval Man" (or something else. I forget. Long time since I cheated) does all researches.

If I recall correctly, all multi-tiered upgrades are upgrades (Scarab might be different, as its not multiple tiers normally, but can be changed to be multi tier), all "+50 Energy" are upgrades, and all "Activated Abilities" (Stimpack/Burrow/Spells) are researches.

It's generally fairly obvious which things are upgrades and which are research, just by looking in the editor. Another rule of thumb is that upgrades enhance something that already exists (dragoon range, interceptor capacity, ultralisk speed) whereas research gives completely new abilities (spells, basically). Also you can tell which is which when you're playing, 'cause the advisor will say a different line, either "upgrade complete" or "research complete" (for protoss anyway).