@_@ Biohazard Icon...pretty....

Anyway, I have a lot of questions. And I mean A LOT. Here goes!

1.) My first, and most pressing, question is: How can I trigger sprites (Note: NOT units, sprites only) such as spell effects to be created, moved or removed? I've seen people talk about it obliquely, but never any mention of how to do it. Were these people just assuming it could be done somehow? Or did they know something I don't? I'm aware of the rock-making glitch, but that's not what I'm looking for, obviously. I also know that units can be created/moved and killed for their death animations; I've seen this done in a few maps. That is ALSO not what I'm looking for, though I do plan on using that technique in my maps as well.

2.) Is there a way to make computer units cast spells (other than by tricking them into MAYBE doing it, like by sending an ultra at a medic so she casts blind)? What I mean is, is there ANY way to say; "Hey, you Arbiter! Stasis those units at that location."?

3.) SCM Draft 2 has the ability to change the color of a given player, but I think this makes StarCraft do funny things. Is there a way to do this without BroodWar flipping the crap out? Also, I once saw an A L | E N S map where everyone turned out to be the same color (tan)! How did they do this? I still have the map, by the way (I can't open it though, cause it's protected ). It's called: A_liens_SE___Final.scx

4.) IMPORTANT QUESTION: Why does upgrading your character's Shields in UMS games NEVER seem to have any effect (or at the very least not so much of an effect, by far, as armour), no matter how many times you upgrade them? What good is the Shields upgrade if it doesn't do anything? Or did these people just set the shield upgrades to be effectively worthless? I haven't checked all the maps' settings (or couldn't). How does Shield strength work?

5.) Is there a way to make a unit that constantly moves in place stop fidgeting (Hydralisks, Lurkers, Broodlings, etc...) and just hold completely still?

6.) I want to make a passive regenerating ability for a protoss unit. Can this be done? If so, how? Mind you, I want them to regenerate over time FROM THE HP THEY HAVE not some pre-set percentage of their health. I could easily do that and it isn't what I want. I also want to speed UP the regen of a Zerg unit at a certain point in the game.

7.) Ok, now this is something I KNOW can be done (as with a lot of these things, cause I've actually seen them done in maps). I just don't know how. How do you create Permanent Fog of War on already discovered terrain? You know, the pitch black fog, not the transparent kind. When characters, say, enter a 'cave' or 'building' (are moved to another part of the map) I would like the entire 'Outside World' to be covered in permanent fog of war. I've seen it done, so I know it can be.

8.) Is there a way to make StarCraft/BroodWar NOT do stuff it regularly does, such as playing that annoying twinkle sound when units are rescued? Actually, this concern is mostly for sounds. Many of the Sounds StarCraft produces grate my nerves to a pulp. Namely, ALL of the alert sounds. Is there a way to get rid of them?

9.) Many of the pictures people post in threads on this site are just the little red x's of doom. Is something wrong with pictures on this site? o_O

1. Only one sprite can be made, the rock one, which you already know about. It isn't possible to create any other sprites, but Disruption Webs can be detected and moved, removed, killed, Dark Swarms can be detected and removed and killed, both can have locations centered on them, and Comsat can be detected using command.

2. Only certain spells, such as Recall and Disruption web can be truly ORDERED to happen, otherwise, you have to "trick" them into using the spell.

3. Changing the colors doesn't affect anything, there shouldn't be any problems with doing it, all they did in that map was set them to the same color..

4. Enjoy. It does do stuff, I don't know what you are talking about.

5. Not really, fidgeting is just built-in.

6. Well, it's possible, like if you are using vHP, or if you are willing to work with EUDs..

7. I'm betting that they lose their own vision and get vision from a computer who has not seen the outside, or visa-versa.

8. The Mute Unit Speech gets rid of some of those

9. No idea

2. I believe maplantis has an article on how to "trick" the computers into casting certain spells.
4. It works just like normal armor does, but just on the shields...
5. It is built into the animation scripts of the units.
7. Don't you put lifted terran buildings and cloak them, so it creates a shadow underneath?

4. You probably think this because shields take full damage from all units.

Mhm, seems like it should explain it, but the armor still seems to do more than the shields There are like two different maps where I just stopped upgrading shields and focused on armour cause the shields didn't seem to be doing ANYTHING. One hit and they'd just vanish. I think the reason is because I had more HP than SP. I really think that's it. But I have to say, that link to the damage calculations was VERY helpful. I'm glad to know how damage is calculated now.

As for the permanent fog of war, could a computer player be added to a game without ANY units? I don't want to place one unit for a computer and then have just one small area around that unit be revealed and the rest of the map not... That would look wierd.

Edit: Oh, by the way, in that map where everyone was the same color we didn't start out that way. We started out with different colors, THEN, after we chose our characters we all had tan units.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 21 2008, 5:38 am by Spaced___Out.

You don't need the computer to have a unit.

Same colored unit? That sounds like a rescue technique. If you rescue a unit, it retains its original color. Basically, you rescued those tan units somewhere on the map without realizing it.


... As for #6, if you want a VERY crude method, you could create a medic at the unit and then remove it; but that would just be silly.

Yeah, I was thinking they were rescued because after I posted these questions I went through a bunch of tutorial maps I downloaded and saw that rescued units retained their original colors and was so relieved I almost passed out, haha. Either we think alike or StarCraft is just REALLY finite. >_> From what I'm dealing with, I'm leaning toward the latter conclusion, unfortunately.

Yeah, that would work actually, I think. I never thought of using a medic. Man, that would really take some finagling to make it work/look right though. I don't think you can cloak Medics without StarCraft crashing either... Yeah, it's pretty crude, but at least it's SOMETHING I wish I could find something better though or at least make this work without the Medic being visible. I'm estimating it takes a medic about 20? ms to start healing a nearby friendly unit. That's wayyy long enough to be noticed. But I've never seen a Medic heal someone that was ON TOP OF them before, so that might be instant. I mean, most of that is the time it takes them to turn and/or walk over to the target. I could create one somewhere else then move them to my character to be healed every second or so. But I bet that would hamper the unit's speed. I don't know, maybe not if it's only that much or slightly faster?

Oh, well if you're actually considering using the medic... Yes, it will slow down the unit a bit.

Cloaking almost any unit known to man (Or at least StarCraft):

Disable doodad state for unit at "locationX"
Wait 100
Enable doodad state for unit at "locationX"
Wait 100
Enable doodad state for unit at "locationX"
Wait 100
Order unit to move to "Anywhere"

You must do this process out of the player's view, though. If they try to watch this happen, they will crash. After it's done, though, you should be fine. Note that the last action is "Order" not "Move Unit," and yes, it is required that the unit moves before you can use it.

For the medics, as long as optical flare is researched and they have enough energy they will blind any enemy unit with more than 81 hp.

For the colors the only way I can think of is using scmdraft2 and going to map description and setting all the players to the same color.

Yeah. In my possession I have a map where the color of one player makes all its units change colors about ten times a second on the minimap. It flashes between various shades of green, grey, and blue. Bizarre.

I know it's not done by triggers because:
1. There's no trigger to change the units' owner.
2. The colors only change on the minimap. The unit's actual graphics don't change.
3. The minimap only refreshes once per second.

Another weird thing that happens with colors like these is that the score bars on the victory/defeat screens show up as golden arrows instead of solid status bars. There's been other weird stuff too.

Wow o_O I've never seen 'golden arrows'

...wait...nevermind. I was thinking you were saying you saw them on the kill score in-game at the top-left of the screen... durr

Strange, I used Roy's cloaking method on a Battle Cruiser. When ever the BC went directly down, it would be completely invisible, and when my cursor went over it my SC crashed. =S

Like I said, almost any unit

Yay! Now I have more problems! Well, this is one of those times when I'm actually COUNTING ON StarCraft's limited nature. Eventually it has to run out of ways to screw up my map settings...

Weird things happen to my Player colors when I use combinations of 'extension colors' (Green, Pale Yellow, Tan, Dark Aqua) and 'super extension colors' (Pale Green, Bluish Grey, another Pale Yellow which always switches back to the previous one, Cyan). I have no idea what these colors' actual title is, that's just what I'm calling them for now.

Whenever any of the 'super extension colors' (Pale Green, Bluish Grey and Cyan) are used they come out in-game looking like Party Colors, Camouflage/Slate, and Ungodly Ugly, respectively. So that's the first problem. They look like the colors described while in the editor (SCM Draft 2), but in-game forget it.

Also, it seems like if I use all 4 of the of the 'extension colors' (Green, Pale Yellow, Tan, Dark Aqua) in a map, StarCraft just reverts to the default Player colors like a moron. But, for some reason it seems like I can use three and get away with it. I've done it with Green, Tan and Dark Aqua. Why is this, or is there something else causing this and I've misidentified the problem?

I ALWAYS place start locations delete all the triggers and uncheck 'Randomize Start Location'.

Is there something wrong with the Pale Yellow color and that's why there are erroneously two of them? Why are there two of them anyway (the second one never works)?

Like I said, I'm using SCM Draft 2.

Yeah, also sometimes when I go to quit mission I get the option to exit the program directly. Other times I can only quit the mission and have to take the looooooooooooooong way out. Why is that?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 22 2008, 9:34 am by Spaced___Out.

Alt+q = quit mission
Alt+x =Alt+f4 = exit program O_O

But why do you want to go out? Just use alt+tab? And why is it here?

ON:

extended colors just dont appear in game, like they do in editors. Like the cyan appears to be blue in Staredit but it is kinda green in game.
P1-P8 colors can be modified only, the others will be reseted.

That didn't really answer my question. What I was wondering is why the opition is available sometimes and not at others. What do you mean 'why is it here?' Why is what here?


That simply is not true. I said above that I've used Green, Dark Aqua AND Tan in-game (they look correct too) and I should mention I've used them on different players, so I know it can be done. Sometimes these colors mess up too. Especially Tan. Sometimes Dark Aqua too, if I remember correctly. I've also used Cyan, Bluish Grey and Pale Green in-game. That's how I know they look screwy. But sometimes it just resets all the colors and I'm not sure why.

Green, Pale Yellow, Tan, Dark Aqua are colors of the players 9-12 -> they work perfectly
Pale Green, Blueish Grey, Cyan are already extended colors (like 16+, which you can access if you just type in a number between 16 and 255) and will vary ingame depending on the palette, which depends on the tileset and thus will usually create strange results.

However, vanilla sc did not support changing colors. The .scm files simply miss a category for color settings -> P1-P12 just always had their default colors. Now if you start a map in .scm format and save it to .scx colors may become glitchy.

To get rid of it start a map in .scx format and copy all relevant objects (terrain, triggers, units, sprites) of the glitching map into the new map. You cannot select multiple locations, nor can you copy and paste them, so you'll have to redo them. Be sure to use the exact names. If you have MANY locations you could use PROEdit to transfer your map. AFAIK it can transfer Fog of War and Location Layers too.

It's as I suspected then. I thought the maps were becoming corrupted somehow. And I did have the suspicion that it was happening when the maps were being saved because every time I started a new map the problem would vanish. That seemed to be the only way I could fix it. So does that screw up ALL the colors? Or just Green and down? Or beyond Dark Aqua? or what?

Also I have some more questions:

1.) Is there a way to trigger techs and whether they're available/unavailable/researched in-game? Or does this all have to be pre-arranged? Cause I want players to be able to choose their class of character THEN it be decided what techs they have available to them. I want to have a High Templar that can use Psionic Storm from the beginning but also a Tassadar that has ONLY Psi Assault, but can later research Psionic Storm at a certain level. I don't want these abilities to be dependant on structures either. I don't want, for instance, to have to build a Hive or whatever before I can get the Adrenal Glands upgrade for zerglings. I just want these abilities to not be available until a certain 'Level' or 'Experience' is acquired.

2.) If I want Infested Kerrigan to have to research all of her abilities in-game will she really learn Cloak from the Covert Ops add-on, Ensnare from the Queen's Nest, Consume from the Defiler Mound and Psionic Storm from the Templar Archives? o_O She would be the only character in the game that would get at least one of each of her abilities from EACH RACE. Also, with someone like Kerrigan (and I can't think of anyone else) who has abilities that are typically researched at different buildings, and I think I already know the answer here, can that character learn OTHER abilities that these facilities provide? For instance, can I research Moebius Reactor or Ocular Implants to increase Infested Kerrigan's energy or sight range? Or Hallucination at the Templar Archives O_O That would be so cool... And if I DID want to research an energy increasing upgrade for Infested Kerrigan, which would it normally be? Metasynaptic Node? o_O

3.) And while I'm on the subject of energy research, I know you can set the energy upgrades' (Metasynaptic Node, Khaydarin Amulet, Argus Talisman, Caduceus Reactor, etc...) maximum research level to higher than 1, but does it do anything beyond this? If I'm not mistaken, I believe I played an RPG map where researching Khaydarin Amulet did nothing even at level 1. Was this because the unit's energy already exceded the regular maximum (I don't remember if it actually did or not)?

4.) I always set all of my spells to center the view on the center of the spell effect as the very first action, but some of them will always center the view, while others never will. Why is this?

5.) How do I share vision with a player in a one-way fashion? Like if I want Player 1 to see what Player 2 sees, but not have Player 2 see what Player 1 sees?

6.) The 'Set Score' function completely baffles me. It has buildings, custom, kills, kills and razings, razings, total, units, and units and buildings. How would I just add 1 to a kill score? o_O Aren't the kills calculated by point values, like 250 points for killing such-and-such? How do the Turret Defense games do it? I know they use gas to count kills, but what about the score in the upper-left with the Player-colored blocks? Those are only single, double or (rarely) triple digits. It really doesn't work that well either...if you're killing a LOT of units close together it doesn't register all the kills.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 23 2008, 7:14 am by Spaced___Out.

In scx all work. In scm you cannot change colors at all. If you mix, then I'm not sure what may happen. Just don't do it.

Prerequisite: Set the player's tech setting to 'enabled'. Then 2 ways:
- Preplace the respective tech building(s) for P12 and give them to the player when he should be able to research it.
- Preplace a unit with that tech for a player with that tech researched and give it to the player (and give it back / kill it after). This way he will receive all techs the unit had.

Heroes always have all techs if it was not disabled. That means there is no way to upgrade a hero units techs in game.

Nope, it works only once though you can spend your money more than once if you allow that in the upgrade settings.

An action will ALWAYS execute when its conditions are met.
Exception: Wait blocks. If you have no wait, there's no problem.
The only possible thing is, that the next trigger negates the center view, by centering the view somewhere else.
But in your case (center view 1st action) I suspect the location is not where you expect it. Try using the move location action just before you center the view on it.

There's only 1 trigger that forces vision settings. Luckily it does what you want.
Have the trigger owned by player 1 and execute the ai script 'Turn ON shared vision for Player 2'.
Note, that the effect works the other way round than the alliances/vision dialogue in game. With the ai you force P2 to give you vision.

It is as you expected.
When you kill a unit you get kill score (e.g. 350 for Hydra).
When you kill a building you get razings score.
But a few things to note:
Kills and razings score is NO seperate score. It just calculates the sum of razings score and kills score.
If you subtract 100 kills and razings score your kills score will be lowered by 100 and your razings score too.
If either score had 100 or less then it will just be set to 0 and the rest of the subtraction will not be accounted for.

When I remember correctly the other values just count how many buildings/units/total units+buildings you have.

An easy trigger for kills detection is to check for at least 1 kills score, then set kills score to 0 and add 1 to gas.
But as you already noticed the system can glitch when you kill more then 1 unit in the same trigger loop.

Here you can find several kills to cash methods, all with their own drawbacks, if you want more info on that subject.

The location is precicesly where I expect, because in the test I did the location never moved for any of the spells. They all used the exact same location, which I titled 'Spell Radius', and, to the best of my knowledge, the spells weren't running at the same time. I did cast them one after another, after all. Also, I had a spell that moved a Rhynadon to each unit in fixed locations (so I could be sure where the Rhynadons would go) and killed it then moved the enemy units elsewhere which gives the impression that the Rhynadons' death animations were the enemies'. However, on one test every time I cast the spell the first time I went to the trigger spell location it would send in the Rhynadons and move the enemies to their designated destinations, but NOT kill the first set of Rhynadons, causing them to wander all over the place. It might be comical, if it weren't so frustrating... If I just left my character unit on the trigger, though, every time it would cycle it would kill all the Rhynadons that it moved there like it was supposed to. Why was it not killing them only the first time? Here's the spell:

Execute for Player 2 (me, blue)

Conditions:
Player 2 brings exactly 1 [any unit] to 'spell name activation location'.

Actions:
Comment 'Spell Name'
Play 'sound' (which works fine, by the way, other than not sounding right for the spell...but that's just a matter of aesthetics)
Mute all non-trigger sounds for current player.
Move 1 Rhynadon for Player 4 (who owns all the Rhynadons) at 'Rhynadon Spawn 1' to 'North Enemy'.
Kill All Rhynadon for Player 4 at 'North Enemy'.
Move 1 Rhynadon for Player 4 at 'Rhynadon Spawn 2' to 'East Enemy'.
Kill All Rhynadon for Player 4 at 'East Enemy'.
Move 1 Rhynadon for Player 4 at 'Rhynadon Spawn 3' to 'South Enemy'.
Kill All Rhynadon for Player 4 at 'South Enemy'.
Move 1 Rhynadon for Player 4 at 'Rhynadon Spawn 4' to 'West Enemy'.
Kill All Rhynadon for Player 4 at 'West Enemy'.
Move All 'enemy unit' for Player 1 (who owns all the enemy units) at 'Spell Radius' to 'Dump'.
Wait 5000 ms.
Kill All [any unit] for Player 1 at 'Dump'.
Unmute all non-trigger unit sounds for current player.
Preserve Trigger (so if I just stand there the trigger reactivates constantly, which it does)

>_>...well...now that I'm looking at it...um, I feel kinda stupid. Haha. I have no Center View in there at all. So...that explains that. But why are the Rhynadons always surviving the first time, but always dying if I stay on the trigger location? Also, the mute speech was meant to make the Rhynadon death sound not play. I don't think it worked Is that because they weren't owned BY me? Also, I should note that I have a trigger that always replenishes the Rhynadons if there aren't any.


Oh, wait...I just realized something. Those Turret D's don't show single, double or (rarely) triple digits in the player score area; they register single, double or triple digits in the MINERALS. That's the cash. But, if I'm remembering correctly, they DO only register 1 for each enemy killed in the score area too. And I don't know how to do that. It's the ACTUAL player's score that I was talking about. This is also relevant for any RPGs I want to make where Player score (XP), minerals (upgrade points/gold, etc.) AND gas (mana) are all used. I can't use one to figure the others in this way, well, except for upgrade points being linked to XP, but that I can do easily. I've been told that I can change the number of points enemies are worth. Where can I do this? THAT'S what I was wanting to know. Well, that and what all the various categories meant, which you explained.

And now I have YET ANOTHER problem. I tested a map where I used myself (Player 1, green), one enemy Computer (Player 2, blue, no units but Start Location) and players 10-12. It didn't matter what I set them to because they always acted the same. Player 12 never did squat, even when I changed its settings. And both Pale Yellow (10) and Tan (11) were, for some reason, set as enemies...kind of. My units would immediately attack them and their units would all start following my units without attacking, except for their Infested Terrans, which would blow the crap out of me. If they always act the same then why does SCM Draft 2 have settings to change their behaviour? It doesn't seem to me that their behaviour CAN be changed. And why are they acting so stupid? I mean, at least they could just be neutral. But acting like that they wouldn't even make a good NEUTRAL Player (now that's sad), which makes them COMPLETELY useless. It should go without saying that I wasn't able to rescue any of these Players' units, not even 12's.

I have another question also. How would I make a specific unit move to the area of another specific unit it just killed. For instance, if I had 12 Drones and one of them killed a Siege Tank, how would I get that one Drone (through triggers, not moving it there myself) to move to the exact spot that that particular tank was standing on?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 24 2008, 12:48 pm by Spaced___Out.