New to here, so maybe this is already somewhere..sorry if it is.

What i like to do is create and play three player maps where i play against the computer with the other two players. What I want to do is place a few buildings around as if they were abandoned or something, but just adding them when creating doesn't work. Is it even possible to add buildings during creation and have them remain when opening the game to play?

I use StarEdit

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 16 2023, 5:14 am by blacknight. Reason: added editor i use

Give these buildings to P4, place a start location for P4 whereever you want (doesn't matter)
Set P4 to rescueable, set P1-3 as pick race.
Play map as use map settings.

I don't know how to set P4 to rescuable or what P1-3 as pick race means. Are those triggers or something?
figured out rescuable - what is P1-3 thing?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 16 2023, 5:37 am by blacknight. Reason: discovered some meaning

"User selectable" is a race you can set in scenario/player setting

i give up - guess it was a bad idea.

At the top of the StarEdit toolbar there should be a list of options such as:
File Edit Options Display_Options Scenario Advanced Triggers Windows Help

Select the Scenario Tab.



This will show you a list of options. Click the one that says "Map Properties"



A window called "Map Settings" should pop up.

In this section you can modify what other people stated above (p1 - p3 means Player 1, Player 2, and Player 3). This section doesn't modify triggers but modifies who plays what in the map. Such as what the map title should be and its hover description. It also controls whether a player is a Human Player, A Computer Controlled Player, or a Rescuable Player (Rescuable Units are given to the player that sends units close to said units). You can also control which race and color the player is assigned. Please note, these changes mostly matter for Use Map Settings games and Melee style games ignore all triggers and map changes. This is why you will want to play the game in "Use Map Settings."


Back to the topic, click the "Owner" box for Player 4 and you will see that you can change the status of the player as seen in the picture below:



Select "Rescuable" to change the status of Player 4 from Human to Rescuable.

Other Information: The Race box can be selected to choose which race you want the player to be set to. The default is User Select, but you can also force the player into being Zerg, Terran, or Protoss. Please note that "forcing" a player into a race only changes the user's UI/BGM. This is primarily more important for CPUs with AI triggers or "User Select." You can experiment with this if needed.

IMPORTANT INFO FOR USE MAP SETTINGS:
The Map Settings Window will have multiple tabs that allows you to modify how the "Data" for certain things are in the Map. These are NOT triggers but instead allow you to change things about the map and how the stats of units.

Forces are the other important thing to modify. In the Map Settings Window, there is also tabs to select called:
Map_Properties Forces Unit_Settings Upgrade_Settings Tech_Settings String_Editor Sound_Editor



The Map Properties tab should be the one you are in for changing said status above. Click the "Forces" tab and you will be able to allocate who is on which team. You can then name the team whatever you want, and click on checkmark boxes to indicate whether they have certain properties. Two things I would suggest is to keep computers and humans on different teams. If you don't want the team to have randomly spawned locations (between the Players 1 - 3 locations you placed) you can fix them by unchecking the "Randomized Start Location" to ensure Player 1 will ALWAYS start at Player 1's start location.

The other tab you can check out for beginner friendly stuff is the "Unit Settings" tab. Here, it will look similar to the "Units" tab on the left of you screen. However, when you select a unit, you can see some of its stats with the options to uncheck default stuff to modify them (so you can set a Marine to 1000 health with 100 attack. Certain things CANNOT be modified sadly without the use of advanced triggers (such as attack speed, collision, and movement speed). However, you can still modify unit's Health, build time, name, attack damage, attack upgrades, their cost, and whether a player has access to the unit.

Hope any of this helps for you

While i appreciate the time u spent in creating this for me, i am unable to achieve my goal in this game creation. Using map settings as i start the game results in instant defeat for me. using anything else at start(melee, free 4 all) result in losing one of the 4 players. Keeping buildings on the map was the goal, but also playing the game as if it were melee where the other 2 non rescuable computer players would gather resources and attack. Can't seem to get that to work no matter how many things i try.

The most basic important thing to ensure is that each Player has a location unit (looks like a colored circle).



If a location unit does NOT exist on the map for a player, they will count as NOT existing in the game. The game will search for this on the map and determine whether the player will exist (this includes for computers too!). If a Player is not appearing, it is because they are missing this location trigger.

Note: You can only have 1 Starting Location per player. If you create a new one, it will automatically delete the other one. On Use Map Settings, this instead only determines where on the map the player's screen will be centered at after the mission briefing.


Sadly, if you want to prevent instant defeat and computers to do stuff, you need to implement triggers into your map. Here is a very basic rundown.

Look at the top toolbar of your screen, and click "Triggers." A row of options will appear and click the option "Classic Map Triggers"



A window should pop up called "Classic Trigedit (STRINGRAY CONFIDENTIAL)". This is a basic UI for modifying Triggers. You will notice that there are already 3 triggers created. This is because every new map you make starts with 3 basic triggers in place. This may be causing you instant defeat error.

These triggers include:
- All players start with 50 minerals
- If a player owns 0 buildings, they are defeated (probably your issue)
- If other players don't have structures AND you don't have allied victory with them, gain victory (when a player gets victory, all other players get defeat).

You can click these to either modify them OR delete them. Click the trigger will highlight it blue and you can have the option to click "Modify" to change the trigger, "Delete" to remove it, or "Copy" to create an identical copy of the trigger.



Triggers general have a format of:
1) Who is it for? (I.E. For player 1)
2) What needs to be done? (I.E. Player requires to own at least 2 marines)
3) What is the result of #2 (I.E. Give Player 1 50 minerals).
The above will look something like



If you want the AI to do something, you will need to generally do 3 things.

1) Create a location
2) Create an AI Trigger at location.
3) Provide them with starting resources (Certain AIs need large amount of starting resources to be effective)

With #1, here is how to make a location.

Click the "Locations" tab on the left side (This should be above "Units." This is highlighted blue in the picture below). Click a location on the map and drag your cursor to create a rectangle. When you let-go of the cursor, it will create a location at that spot. Place the location over the "Commander Center/Hatchery/Nexus" of the Computer's base and also try to have it cover the minerals/gas too.



Addition information: If you click the location, it will be highlighted. Clicking it when highlighted will allow you to drag to location to a new spot while retaining its shape. Clicking a side or corner will instead work towards resizing the location. If you rapidly double click a location, a new window will pop-up. Most of the things on this window is for more "advance" location changing. However, the top option allows you to change the name of the location. So you can change the name from "Location 1" to "Blue Zerg's Base" instead. This can help you identify which location you want when making triggers.

To interact with Locations, you must have the Locations tab on the left size selected. Once you select a different tab (such as Units) the locations will become hidden and you won't be able to interact with them until you click the Locations tab again.

2) Creating an AI Trigger.

Go to "Classic Map Triggers." Refer to above if you have forgotten.

Click the "New" button.

A window should appear with title "Select players trigger should execute for." In my example and picture above, Player 2 (Blue Zerg) is the CPU. So click the box next to Player 2 to create a check mark there. After this is done, you can look at the top of this same window and you will notice 4 tabs.

Players Conditions Actions Text_View



The area that we are currently in is the "Players" tab. After you've checked Player 2, click the "Conditions" tab.

In this area, it will look similar to the previous "main" trigger window. On the right, click "New." A new window will appear called "Edit condition properties". Below that, there is a drop-down tab that you can select. It should always default to the top trigger called "Accumulate." Click this tab will display a list. Move on selection down and hit the option that is called "Always". This condition essentially means that it will immediately run when the game starts. (If you want a delay, you can choose a different option that I'll explain below). Once you selected "Always", hit the OK in the window and the condition "Always" should appear in the window.



We are done with the conditions. Now click the Action Tab. This will look similar again. Click the "New" button. A new window should appear similar to the conditions one. This is named "Edit action properties" and the drop-down tab for this one is called "Center View". Click this drop-down menu and scroll down near the bottom until you see "Run AI Script At Location".



(The trigger names are listed in alphabetical order). When selected, the text below should state:
Execute AI script 'script' at 'location'
The "script" and "location" should be in blue indicating these can be changed.

click the blue "script" text which will bring up a drop-down menu which you can pick what you want. You can consult AI forums for details on what each one does but reading some of them can help give you a gauge on what they will do. Since we have Zerg, I will choose "Expansion Zerg Campaign Medium"



After you select the option, the blue "script" text should be changed to "Expansion Zerg Campaign Medium." Next click the location blue text. A drop-down menu showing you available location options will be shown. Since we only have 1 location, there will be 2 options. Select Location 1 (or whatever you named it).



Then select OK in the window to create the action. Select OK again in your current window as now we are done with the trigger. A new trigger should appear.



It should look like that above.

3) You can repeat steps similar to Step 2, except replacing the "action" section with the "Set Resources" action. Note: Ore is "minerals".

If you want to simulate the CPU to more like the Melee variants, instead use the AI Script "Zerg Expansion Custom Level" (should be the last option in the AI scripts drop-down list).

Why give the AI resources? Because some AI scripts will make units but make almost no workers meaning they will lack the resources to make stuff. Some of these scripts are the Original Campaign and Broodwar Campaign AIs. The Campaign AIs" ironically are NOT used for the campaign but are just harder versions of AIs. The Insane AI is the hardest, while the Custom AI are what used in the Melee maps. Only the Custom AIs attempt to play with resource and mining management in mind (and alternative builds). Insane AIs can expand (but don't actually need to).


If you still don't understand, that's okay. Do your best to try to experiment with stuff. Originally when starting map making a long time ago, I didn't even "attempt" to write triggers for like a full year but eventually learned majority of what you can do with StarEdit just through self-experimentation. This can be used to help other beginners too if needed.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jul 18 2023, 3:33 am by TheHappy115.