2 days ago

TL,DR: Needed help from someone who understands triggers in map redactor ScmDraft.

Hi everyone. Im searching for a person who could help me in fixing some sort of issues in sc:bw ums map. Map is called "The Phantom". Not everyone could know what this map is about so in a couple of words:

Played lots of versions with friends on EU and found the funniest to play on. Unfortunately it was unbalanced and bugged. Lots of resources for all players, non-default upgrades, units production is faster than default. Those things were fixed by myself, but came other troubles to solve:

1) Selecting game mode is given to a random person. Usually a lot of troubles caused by this feature, players to select are either afk or new so they cant get what to do. This feature must be given to host only.

2) Eliminated players have no vision. After being eliminated players usually stay in the game to see who was the phantom(bad guy) or to see how situation goes on on the map. I played a version where eliminated players automatically were given vision from everyone again when situation was unclear with phantom. Link below
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7tjLF7eDHmXMWZkSDVuUXVQZ0E/view

3) Main spawns bug which doesnt allow you to build Nexus/CC/Hatch on start location again. Causes trouble which not allows to make Comsat station. Thought it was Start Location placement or minerals fields in red area but everything out of it so i dont know what could it be.


Those problems are based on triggers which I dont understand at all. I can only see symbols in those strings of codes
http://i.imgur.com/0YC8mco.jpg

If someone could explain it to me -or- link to a guide for dummies for SCMDraft -or- even make job himself ~40 players each evening will be grateful.

Link to the map:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7tjLF7eDHmXakdJM3lTLXhiTlk/view

P.S: Apologize for a topic placement if it is in a wrong place.

EDIT:

2 problems were solved, but left the "game-selector" feature which is still being given to a random person.

So I tried to create another "force" for host, made alliences and vision for 2 forces, and host got the right to select game mode
BUT when you try to go into any circle (game mode select) nothing happens. There was a 20 seconds anti-afk timer which kills civilian after its end and gives randomly another person civilian to select game mode, but when timer ended nothing happened also. As was said i dont understand triggers at all and i dont know what and how to fix in this case.

Unchecking randomize option for "force" made game annoying with same positions also phantom was at the same place in 3 games we played so its not a good desicion to solve the problem i guess.

Link to the map with 2 solved problems (ty user Xalitus from Bnet):
The Phantom with OBS.scx

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 4 2017, 11:37 am by keep_it_movin.

This is difficult. You either need to make it a vote for all players or you need to remove random start locations, which adds all sorts of difficulty. You can also make the host always top left and in his own team.
Make 8 triggers that run the ai script turn on shared vision for current player for player 1-8 when the player dies. You can use whatever trigger you want for when a player dies, I'm not sure of the circumstances.

replace the minerals or the start locations so they are further away. Copy the placement from the actual hunters map?


Also, please confirm for me, do you start out with extra supply or is it just the phantom gets extra supply?

Try Classic Map Triggers. They are made for easy manual trigger editing.


Text trigs are mainly meant to be used to import or export triggers, and for mass copy and replace purposes.

2 problems were solved, but left the "game-selector" feature which is still being given to a random person.

So I tried to create another "force" for host, made alliences and vision for 2 forces, and host got the right to select game mode
BUT when you try to go into any circle (game mode select) nothing happens. There was a 20 seconds anti-afk timer which kills civilian after its end and gives randomly another person civilian to select game mode, but when timer ended nothing happened also. As was said i dont understand triggers at all and i dont know what and how to fix in this case.

Unchecking randomize option for "force" made game annoying with same positions also phantom was at the same place in 3 games we played so its not a good desicion to solve the problem i guess.

Link to the map with 2 solved problems (ty user Xalitus from Bnet):
The Phantom with OBS.scx

You didn't post the one with two alliances, so I can't help with that.

What exactly is the issue with the current system? Why not give everyone a civilian and whoever moves first chooses the mode, or whichever has the most civs chooses the mode after 20 seconds? Decide the mode before you start. Ties go to the leftmost and then topmost mode, or whatever order you put the triggers in. If any mode has 5 civs on it, you can instantly start.

When I said remove randomized locations, that means you'd have to also create a method to randomize the phantom and make sure that each starting location was random. Not simple. 2 forces also means the host will always be in the same spot and will likely never be the phantom unless you fix the way the phantom is chosen.

There are 2 different gamemode types: selecting "Phantom count" & "Resources".
1) First mode lets you selecting how many phantoms do you want in the game. There are 5 options:
A) 1 Phantom - 0 Paladins
B) 2-0
C) 2-1
D) 2-2
E) RANDOM
"Phantom" - bad guy, gets lots of resources constantly, his job is to kill others. "Paladin" - good guy, gets ~0.5 "lots of resources" constantly and his job is to help slayers and kill phantom(s). Others are slayers, "Slayer" - good guy with default conditions.

2) Second mode allows you to select amount of resources on the map (Basic / Full). "Basic" makes no changes, default melee conditions for every spawn and expand. "Full" - 15 mineral fields and 2 geysers on main, ~10 and 1 geyser on expands, each with 50 000 units.

Phantom count mostly depends on how many players are on host. Its impossible to win against 2 phantoms without paladin when there are 6-7 people on host(2 phantoms & 4-5 slayers): 2x4(5) goes easily for phantoms whenever they want to attack. Game is not even started when there are only 4 people cuz even 1x3 phantom wins with right click going mass even against expirienced players who try to rush him.
__And I made huge advantage for slayers cuz I took away the aspect where firstly you have to find out who is the phantom, which means he/them get(s) time to estimate a situation, look who is more/less dangerous and prepare to attack in a best way.

Resource type depends on a skill level. "Basic" is normal one and "full" is for guys with bad macro who cant get away from main. As you know starcraft is skill-based RTS and macro is one of the most important part of it which also includes the need to expand and control your new bases out of main.
__With "Full" resources in an average game phantoms have no chance in late game when it comes to Tier3 (Battlecruisers, carriers, etc.).


You are asking whats wrong when a random person who is literally new to this game can select a game mode. -Everything
The guy:
Picks 2 phantoms with low count of players - game ruined.
Goes random with low count of players - game ruined.
Goes "full resources" with average+ players - game ruined.
Goes mode of his own choice against majority of the votes - game ruined
etc etc etc.
__Taking away an aspect where players leave being annoyed with the game mode/map.
__Taking away an aspect where someone lags hard so the game needs to be rehosted.

It takes up to 15 minutes to start a game today and there is a huge chance you have to "go rmk" simply because randomiser can select an unexpirienced player to choose a game mode. Ridiculous thing that fights with common sense.

I dont know what was the situation 10 years ago when author made a map, when community was much bigger and I guess he tried to fight with monopoly of the host where 7/8 players were expirienced and wanted to pick mode also, but still what prevented others to create their own host if host only could select a gamemode i dont know.

Im tired of explaning new players what and why they should pick. Also people dont live that long to have time to explain this stuff to every new player. Still selector can go his own and there would be no fun in the match.

TL;DR: gamemode-selecting-randomiser gives a chance for unexperienced players to choose a gamemode what may ruin a game
So selecting a game mode feature must be given to a host only.

So game mode depends on how fast someone moves to a circle not what everyone wants to play? Consequences explained above.



I dont want to be rude but i came here because i was told that there are people who understand stuff and for them fixing my issue would be a piece of cake. As i already said I dont understand triggers at all so I have to ask a different person to implement ideas anyone suggests.
If you cant give a map with ur realized idea then im sorry but I dont need it, cuz I already have 3 different forums with tons of ideas which might work or not.

Only thing I can offer is map testing.

Why don't you make mode selection automatic then? You could leave in a switch pro/noob mode, if you really wanted to.

Well they were wrong then, weren't they?

We'll be here in case you need help figuring out why something doesn't work.

IMO the best method is to redo the selection triggers as a vote so the majority decides, but a workaround is to give everyone civs. That way whoever is first on will choose the mode. If you have any griefers then they already ruined the game didn't they?

You may want to throw down a powerup first before creating the civilians so that they don't get trapped.

Man, you guys are really bad at dealing with the plebs aren't you lol

Instead of continuing to ramble – yes, it counts as rambling – on about triggering, why not address the complaint that the thread poster actually brought up? I don't think it's honestly that hard to give a simple explanation why and how he should learn basic triggering for SC maps. With that being said however, handling randomization in SC1 maps is not a simple triggering job - not if the bitsize is bigger than negligible and not if you don't want to odiously bruteforce it.

To the OP: You messaged the server on Discord, but for posterity's sake, the problem boils down to do you want 1 person to pick the gamemode, or do you want it to be vote-based? First to the beacon is obviously out of the question, for obvious reasons. Going with a vote system is easy. Just give a civ to every player and then count how many active players there are, then if there are say 5 players in the game say that if 3, or 4, people bring their civs to <X> beacon then select option <X>. And if there are 7 players then enable that option if there are say 4, or 5, or 6 people or whatever, you decide how many you want. If at the end of the countdown timer an option hasn't been selected, select the one with the most votes. Handling random stuff is a bit more difficult though. I won't repeat what the other members on here have already posted with regards to this so I'll just say that if you make it so that P1 always picks (by moving P1 into his/her own Force), then you're going to have to do a lot of messy workarounds for making sure P1 gets random start locations along with everyone else. Same with phantom selection – you're probably going to have to review some of the code to make sure that you don't break some of the code. Basically, if you do it by moving Player 1 into his/her own Force, you can't rely on SC's automatic, built-in player slot randomizer anymore, because you can't have the rest of the (Force 2) players be able to have that randomized start location while P1 doesn't. You would honestly and completely have to basically create your own custom code (in the triggers) for doing that work now.

Actually, I just realized: You're always going to have to forgo the built-in automatic player randomizer no matter what. Sorry. Apologies. Basically I'll code it for you. Will get back to you in a bit most likely.

Update: Turns out I hurt the guy's feelings (....lol? lmao) so I'm not finishing the coding job anymore. If anyone else comes up and puts in a request though I will. I'll make sure SEN sends notifications to my email.

Seems that your feelings got hurt if you stopped doing your job you promised to do.
No problem with your codding stoppage. There are already people who offered a help and they dont have troubles with behavior and need of asserting themselves.

Now Im afraid noone gonna beg you to do what you tried to but its ridiculous how far people can go to get an attention.