As most of you already know, if you want a cool looking wireframe for a unit, you have to have the hp under 9(?) and in the 2nd box, under 9 as well. EG. A marine with 4/3 HP

As I have discovered recently (if anybody cares), you can use unit sprites to open the door for many more wireframe effects. Unit sprites are different than actual units, as they will ALWAYS start with their default HP. EG. A marine unit sprite will ALWAYS have 40 hp. If you edit marines HP and give it 25 HP, the unit sprite will have 40/25 hp. 40 being the default, 25 being the edited. So each time it gets hit, the color of the wireframe would change (until its hp is lower than the 2nd number).

Already well known and documented. Thanks for the heads up, nevertheless.

Nice find! Should be able to squeeze out some more colors now.


Really? (link please) I know using the extra hitpoints bit for colors is well documented but I couldn't find any documentation for taking advantage of sprites HP default to work with colors


Since you didn't post an example I scraped together a little something:

Attachments:

I haven't seen a single thing related to the use of unit sprites.


After more testing I've noticed it does not work with shields or zerg units, due to the regeneration. So zerg units are stuck with the normal way to do it.


It would also seem the ratio of hp has everything to do with color, so some units will not be able to achieve the same effects as others.

There seems to be two different types of wireframes, filled and normal. Filled being archon/mineral field/critters/etc. And normal being anything not filled like marine/wraith/etc.

A ratio of 50/1 would make normal wireframes blackened 100% of the time, and 5/1 ratio would make filled wireframes blackened 100%.



Both units have a normal wireframe
Shows an example of some different colors available(probe). And the 50/1 ratio.

Another peculiar thing I noticed was having a ratio of 20,000/1 on a mineral field. The colors would change depending on your screen position, but you would either have to move your cursor over the wireframe or click the mineral field again to show the new colors.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 7 2012, 9:34 am by SinistrouS.

It's because it isn't really useful .. it only works on pre-placed units, and you cannot heal them or get them back up to those levels.
Also: http://www.staredit.net/?p=oldwiki&s=0#Unit_Sprite


Before when I was playing with this I just placed a bunch of them with 1 hp, and then had a unit that does 1 damage to attack them and watch as it goes through many different colors ... I liked the purple ones, or perhaps the glowing ones on solid wireframes.

Wireframe colors are from this table:
[attach=8596]
Doing higher values just makes it pick wrong indexes, or perhaps nonexistent ones (buffer overflow) ...

Attachments:

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on May 7 2012, 9:11 pm by FaRTy1billion.

I see. And I guess the only usefulness of this is if you want certain preplaced units to have "perfect" wireframes. All buildings have this possibility now.

I cannot exactly document for you (other than by providing old maps), but I can tell you that I used it in a map last modified October 24, 2004. So, Deathknight was working them and the knowledge was around back then and probably earlier.