I need some cloaked units be visible by other players without providing vision for those players or giving them detectors.

I wonder if there is a way to achieve this other than defeating a player. As we know, when a player is being defeated all his units automatically transferred to the 12 player, plus all cloaked units magically lose their cloaking abilities. I need exactly the same effect, but preferably without having to defeat a player because it has a number of inconveniences.

Guys, what can you think about it?

Could parasite from a shared vision comp

Thanks for the idea! Actually I should ask the question more specifically. I'm playing tricky vision games and using zerg lurkers to draw "holes" on the ground. I don't want them be visible outside player's vision.

I'm wondering what happens to units during player's defeat that makes them visible and that can't be simulated triggerwise? Is there a unit visibility flag that is being dropped when defeat happens?

I've actually tried a couple of workarounds for this over the years.

1) defeated computer
- cost: lose 1 player slot, new units can't be created

2) shared vision computer
- cost: burrowed unit reveals an area at all times

3) parasite'd units
- cost: need a computer to cast parasite, players always see the burrowed unit

4) player-owned burrowed unit
- cost: always see burrowed unit, lurkers will attack

5) plagued/ensnared units
- cost: you need a system to constantly create, ensnare, burrow, and replenish the burrowed units

6) vision update trick
- cost: you need to know the exact number of units every 300th frame; only some indexes work, and the system won't work if a unit is blinded in the game
- note: I've attached a map for this one

7) hallucinated units
- cost: may not work anymore? have to replenish the unit before it dies


Having a defeated computer to reveal the burrowed units is by far the easiest solution, so I'd recommend it. If you have a set number of units, option 6 is interesting to play around with. I can explain it in detail if you'd like.


In response to your previous post, I have no idea which flag is used to reveal an invisible unit to all players, but I remember something similar happening with hallucinated cloaked units. Are hallucinated burrowed units still visible to all players? I honestly can't remember.

Attachments:

Thanks, Lethal! This is a really complete list. Silly me, I haven't thought of 3, 5 and 7. Also, 6 looks really hardcore but I guess the trick there is to give detector at the right time, right?

The interesting thing I remember about cloaky hallucinations is that if energy is required to sustain cloak then cloaked hallucination will uncloak (when you create it triggerwise with cloaked property) and the unit won't look like hallucination for it's owner: no blue, just like the normal unit. Then I made a test map to figure out the rest. The cloaked hallucination with temporary cloak doesn't show to other players unless detected. The burrowed cloaked hallucination behaves like it was a visible unit. Though, as a side note, hallucinations can't burrow or unburrow on their own.

Three questions about the attached map: 1) Why the description says it's version Final2? 2) Why player 2 isn't told player 1 is a jerk when he rapes the potential victim? and 3) Why this message isn't "always displayed"?

Just kidding The idea is really cool on it's own, but I believe it's too hard to implement in a real map. There is hatchery that spawns larvas, I wonder if that doesn't interfere with the system in question?

So, the defeated computer looks really like the most practical solution, but I just thought about a nice twist on 3 and 4 that works without having player it's own vision. In this case you still can see your own unit or parasited unit, but it doesn't provide you vision. In my map it's just the case: players don't have vision for themselves most of the time, but the problem is that I want all players see this unit, not only a dedicated player. (I can use stacked units and etc... but it's getting too complicated.)

It's interesting to mention that even when your own vision off your detectors still detect cloaked units provided you have them in the field of view. So there is the last solution: to give player a detector somewhere outside his vision that will detect burrowed units.

Post has been edited 7 time(s), last time on Aug 1 2013, 2:34 pm by Wormer.

This is really simple to do. You want player 1 to detect ALL of player 2's units?

turn on shared vision on the first frame of the map.
turn off shared vision every 100 frames.
turn it back on on the next frame.
Don't use optical flare.

Thanks for the idea, rockz! This is cool to know, but particularly in my map I'm using flares to speed up vision updation. It's pretty cruicial for gameplay to update vis as fast as possible.

it's actually the same as lethal's #6, but you're SOL.

I use the vision update trick in my RPG. Rockz helped me with it. Found a sweet spot where you can not see the unit, nor is your own unit deselected.

As far as I know with blinding I suppose it is still technically possible but blinding resets the vision re-setter to the frame which the blinding occurred.

As a result I get flickering vision sometimes. Can't remember about cloaked units though. I think I remember them having their own unique frame. Give vision to a cloaked and uncloaked unit and see which one appears first?

Yes, there are 30 key frames for cloaked units.

Each unit is assigned this key frame when it is created (first unit placed is frame 1, 25th unit placed is frame 25, 31st frame placed is frame 1). if a player has detection on the unit on its key frame, it is revealed for 30 frames, until the next key frame. This means you will occasionally lose sight of units on frames 100, 200, and 300 (different units each time) so 3 key frames will be partially invisible.

Lethal is correct. Oh well it was worth a shot.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 12 2013, 11:59 pm by rockz.

It's been awhile since I've looked into this stuff, but I'm pretty sure index number doesn't inherently relate to the cloak/reveal sequence. If I remember correctly, every 300 frames all cloakable units (ie. not map revealers, etc.) are loaded into an array in descending order. That means that if you kill one of these cloakable units or create one some time later, the cloak/reveal indexes will be changed the next time the array is updated. That makes it very annoying to work with this system unless you have tight control over all the units.