I looked through the trigger editor and couldn't find a way to detect the texture at a specific location (i.e. position of unit).

What I need is to find a way to check when a unit steps onto a specific texture (like dirt). Is this possible without doing a monotonous and painstaking workaround?

If there isn't a straightforward method, it might be difficult. Consider that textures can overlap in various opacities, which opens up... problems with it.

I'm using max opacity for each texture, so there won't necessarily be an overlap in the map.

He is pointing out that since there could be an overlap having a detection method built in would be pointless since it would not mean anything. Depending on your map this may not be a feasible but you could use something else to differentiate between textures (units, height, regions, points).

Regions would be the best option. You can even modify the shape of the region to easily cover larger areas with only 1 region.

Then how exactly does the "fill texture" feature work when editing terrain? The editor uses a detection for textures that in theory should transfer over to in-game detection.
That's the option I was trying to avoid. The shape of the terrain is... not very close to uniform.
I need a subtle way to differentiate between textures. Units/points are out of the question, height would probably not be subtle enough and would be difficult to setup, and regions are not preferable due to the long time it would take to setup.

Is it safe to assume that there is no action to directly detect terrain/textures, and I should start making an alternative method of detection? In other words, this topic has no solution?

It could technically possible if you could find a way to duplicated ground pathing, you might be able to rig up something with validators. But as said before, there is still the chance that two textures could be layered on top of each other or blended together, resulting in two different effects. It may be easier to resort to regions.

Also, the way the textures are rendered in the editor and the way they are rendered in game are two completely different things. While the map data may remain the same, certain efficiency and performance based operatinos are performed on them for in game performance reasons. This is why the editor is a lot laggier than running the map in game, and why the map takes many numbers of time over to load in game as opposed to the editor, as nothing is optimized for gameplay and must be generated then. At the very best, the ground would be rendered with a layering system or some form of alpha splash, which would take probably a ray trace or a pseudo-clamp detection method to find out which textures you were looking for, assuming the validators didn't work. It could even be possible that the entire ground texture is rendered as a mega-texture, which would make this feat impossible.

Alright, let me revise my question a bit:

What would be the easiest way to detect when a unit steps onto the white sand texture shown below?



Region shaping would be a pain with how it's done in the editor.

raise the white area by 1 and detect the unit's height change... :S

I tried that, but the calculations of a unit's height are inconsistent and buggy. A moving unit won't notice a subtle height change, and being somewhat near an elevated height (despite plateauing/uniforming) will eventually trigger the height change.

It looks like the easiest option, though not very easy, and rather time consuming, would be to create a region shape on the blue area, and detect when a unit leaves.

Since there doesn't seem to be the option of detecting textures via trigger, and no suitable substitute for it, this topic can be closed.

Have you tried to use the Custom Script?

No idea how to work with that; I guess I'll do a little research. I'm not sure how to refer to the terrain through Custom Script, but it's worth a shot.

Edit: It doesn't sound like Custom Script can go beyond the scope of the trigger editor. It's just used as a convenience, much like a function. I could be wrong, but that's what I found while browsing.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Sep 5 2010, 3:10 pm by Roy.

Necro!

I've had kind of a flash...
What about using creep?
You probably can change the aspect of creep with some modding tools so it looks like an other texture of your choice.
From there, you could detect the change of terrain texture by detecting the change of units' speed.

This is just the basic idea, and I'm not sure it is feasible, but it looks pretty good. The only problem is that you'd only be able to detect 2 different textures... but that's a start!

To increase the number of textures, you could also use raised terrain along with some height-detection triggers.
You could also use cliffs... I believe there are Validators that allows you to detect the cliffs' level. If you need flat terrain, you simply lower the cliff and modify the Pathing so its walls are walkable.

Did this help?

Nope, tried creep. It doesn't shape like I would want it to. I've tried having creep spread on the white terrain and made the other terrain creep immune, but the shape is just blocky, and it can't handle the smaller details.

This might actually work. I haven't tried it, and shaping may be a bit tricky, but this sounds like a very feasible idea. I just needed some way to differentiate between two types of terrain, and by using cliff levels, that can be easily managed. I want it to be flat, so hopefully I can make it appear seamless in-game that they are different cliff heights.

Thank you very much, payne. I will jump right on this when I feel like mapping again. I had been using region shaping and it was just a pain.

Or you could just do it like they did in WarCraft 3 and make individual regions.

Of course, making them all regions would be vastly easier than in WarCraft 3, so maybe it'd be a bit more viable.

Actually, Warcraft III could detect terrain via triggers. I don't have the game on this computer, so I can't cite the exact trigger condition, but it exists and is easy-as-pie to do. That's why I thought StarCraft II would have some sort of support for it as well.