SCBW map editors: i need your scripts!

i was told OmniScourge created the alliance status condition script for the "vote for high resources" trigger in his Phantom BGH.
i need the alliance status to trigger an effect in my customized map. any help would be appreciated!
i have also seen this on FS+obs - P5 has "banner" - it usually doesn't work, but supposedly if he unallies someone or whatever, he is kicked out of the game. i have also seen similar features in a heap of other ums's that make you automatically really by the time your units turn towards the other player's to shoot. speaking of which, there was a script that automatically stopped your units from attacking your other units/or allied units as soon as you attack and you are not able to inflict any damage no matter what you try. anyway caz i started getting too far in this - i need the 'alliance status' CONDITION in order to

also looking for a trigger that would create a dodad (or sprite in my case) on a certain condition - the triggers i see in scm draft only create units and a few unit-based effects like comsat scan. the sprite is included in the scm draft sprites but only shows at the beginning of the game till the animation lasts.

I don't know exactly what's going on in the map you described, but if P5 is allied to everyone, then you can use the "Foes" condition to see if he has at least 1 foe remaining. If he does, that means he unallied someone, and then you can ban him.

You can achieve this by making a trigger that allies someone and then adding the "Preserve Trigger" action at the end of it. If you're constantly allying someone, you won't be able to attack their units.

You can't create doodads/sprites with triggers. Most of the sprites for spells such as psionic storm or scanner sweep with disappear at the beginning of the game, but there are some sprites, such as dark swarm and disruption web, that will last the entire game.

Alright, well, you're asking for a handful of things here, so I'll try to break them out. By "script" I assume you mean a trigger system, because you can't just write new conditions or scripts without modding.
Detecting alliance status isn't a trivial task, but it can be done. We'll ignore EUDs because they're not really feasible for alliance statuses.

Here's a system that will work (it requires you use a unique unit for the death counter for each player):

Basically what this does is each player marks who their foes are with the first set of triggers, and then you can use the "Deaths" condition to figure out who is unallied to whom.

The above system will do this: just put the defeat action as the "Do Something" (and only use the Player 5 foe detection triggers if you only want Player 5 to be able to defeat people). This should always work: there must have been something wrong with the triggers if it sometimes did not work in that map.

This is as simple as having an action that always sets the alliance status of you and your allies. When the action runs, your units will automatically cancel any attack orders they have on allied units.


Uh, what?

Sorry, but it's not possible to create doodads/sprites via triggers. You can't create Comsat scanners (or Nuclear Missiles, eggs, cocoons, mineral chunks, etc.) either, for that matter.

This is exactly what I was about to say. Use this trigger. Of course, you also need to be using hyper triggers (which all maps should be using anyways).

Keep in mind: Constantly changing the alliance status for any players to any alliance status will make it impossible for every player to manually attack allies. It doesn't matter if you're making Player 7 set Player 8 as an enemy, Players 1 through 6 still won't be able to attack allied units.

The secondary benefit of using Roy's trigger, of course, is that you're also preventing the players from unallying one another.

To be clear, when Azrael says hyper triggers, he's talking about this system, or the newer, more efficient single hyper trigger. Either one will work fine, but the second one is simpler to implement, so you should use that one.

well that pretty much sums it up, thanks for the quick reply. i wish i had thought of a death counter alone because i am already using a newly created unit to determine this allied state.

concerning the automatic stopping of the attacks - it had to do with attacking your own buildings. i wasnt able to inflict any damage to my building because all the attacks were halted the moment they were issued just as the attacking unit attempted to launch the attack.

i was going to ask about the wait blocks too but now i will attempt to avoid them.
anyway, can anyone explain or provide a link that explains how hyper triggers are used? i saw everything linked so far but i cant understand the effect and use of this: http://www.staredit.net/topic/16433/

also, i read that the life of a burning command center can be used as a timer - how do this?

is there any way to use the kills of a certain unit as a trigger - as opposed to deaths? (i see the least/most kills of unit in the conditions list)
and is it possible to make the death of a hallucinated unit trigger anything?

This has already been answered:

It basically accelerates the rate at which triggers run: normally there is a long pause after each trigger cycle (about two seconds). A hyper trigger changes this long pause to be roughly 1/12th of a second (or approximately 24 times faster). You'll need to use it to prevent units from attacking from the ally trigger I posted above.

This is a horrible way to time things: use Death Counters for this. For the sake of completeness, though:

You can create a Terran building with less than 33%(?) health and then detect when that building no longer exists as a form of timing (since Terran buildings burn down and die when they're in the red zone). The lower the health you give it, the shorter the timer will be. It's terribly limited and requires a physical presence on the map, unlike Death Counters.

It's easier if you're doing it just as a one-off. Refer to the various Kills to Cash systems to see how detecting kills works.

For the sake of your sanity, I'm just gonna say no: detecting hallucinations directly with conditions is impossible, and finding a hallucination is a convoluted task that normally requires a relatively controlled environment.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 23 2014, 3:16 pm by Roy.

It makes your triggers hyper!

But really, that's what it does. If you make a trigger with the condition "Player 1 brings at least 1 Terran Marine to Beacon Location", then when Player 1 puts his Terran Marine on the beacon, you know what happens? Nothing. Wait a second. Okay, now it happened.

That's because StarCraft only checks the conditions of your triggers once every 1.5 seconds. That's too damn long! People go "ew wtf" and leave with gross delays like that.

When you use hyper triggers, it does one thing: StarCraft checks the conditions of all your triggers 12 times per second. That's more like it! When Player 1 puts his Terran Marine on that beacon, BAM, that trigger HAPPENS! Instantly!

It's literally the most necessary thing ever.


Yes! Can you be more specific about exactly what you're trying to do in your map? As Roy said, dealing with hallucinations is a tricky business, but I've created some resources in the past for handling them. Just explain what you're trying to do with them.

I'm writing an article to cover the exact details of this.

In any case, the wait action causes Starcraft to run through the trigger list an additional time. We can exploit this by stacking waits so that this cycle of repeating executions takes a very long time to complete. A basic verision is an Always condition followed by Wait actions and a Preserve Trigger action. The waits then interact with one another until the list is exhausted.



Each arrow in the above picture is a full execution of all the triggers.

With alternating hyper triggers (also called switch or complex hypers), the list is never exhausted because it "bounces" off of two different players.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 23 2014, 4:23 pm by Sacrieur.

so does this mean a player is able to ally/unally himself?

already know about the death counters - is it possible for a trigger condition to be activated upon a certain unit damage/hp?

that sucks! and as already mentioned sprites cannot be created
is it possible to change unit properties (as it is possible upon its creation), so at a certain point it becomes a hallucination, or burrows ? (aside from computer-controlled units burrowing in gameplay)
if certain unit hp is detectable then the unit can be replaced with a hallucination

and finally, is it possible to modify unit energy or remaining time (as we know it is not energy) for hallucinations and broodlings? (or if not during game, at least upon their creation)
as far as i can remember, this is not possible

another question also came up, is it possible to create a neutral unit with a trigger? it isn't working in my current trial: if Neutral brings at most 0 kakaru to anywhere, then create 1 kakaru for Neutral at anywhere and play kakaru.wav, wait, preserve trigger - the wav is playing (repeatedly) but there is no kakaru

you can't create for neutral, you can create for a player and give to neutral

giving an unit to neutral only makes it an inactive enemy unit and my units are attacking it even though it is considered "neutral"
is it possible to create/give this kakaru for/to the neutral player12 again?

Players don't have the ability to ally and unally themselves. If you want the trigger to allow players to ally/unally other players, you can change the trigger to set allies to allied and foes to enemy.

Yes, with EUD health detection. Read more here:

http://www.staredit.net/topic/14226/#304567
http://www.staredit.net/306292/

No. You'll need EUDAs to accomplish something like this, and even then, it's limited in what you could do.

No. You can create Broodlings that don't die by using the normal "Create Unit" though.

What jjf said is correct. Even though the player color is retained, it belongs to the neutral player (Player 12). You might have to manipulate the unit further if you want to cancel any orders targeting it, such as "Move Unit" or toggling invincibility.

concerning the hyper triggers: you guys are describing what hyper triggers do and how to make them but i still cant find out how to use them
so in order to use the hyper trigger, for example the switch 256 one, no other wait commands must be active? i read that it is player-specific, so this wait command queue would be different for each player?

concerning the hallucinations.. well i want to do something like this:
if neutral has suffered 2 deaths of hallucinated broodling, create 1 terran civillian for player1 at anywhere
OR
if neutral brings exactly 0 hallucinated broodling at anywhere and elapsed game time is less than 20 seconds, then create 1 terran civillian for player1 at anywhere

kakaru: can't make it invincible because i want it to trigger a certain command each time it is killed. so my best option for this too would be looking at EUDs? so that for example whenever it is attacked by a certain player it brings the effect to him? (possible?)

You can just copy and paste the code in the thread straight into your map. Or you can build them verbatim yourself. No other work is required.



We're getting into some more complicated things here. It's best just as a general rule to always use DCs so that compatibility with HTs is preserved. But you can use waits under specific circumstances. First, at least one player with HTs must not be running any wait actions. Second, the HTs must be placed at the bottom of the trigger list.

Hyper Triggers work automatically in the background: you don't do anything in particular to use them.

This is possible to do depending on your map, but I'm on my phone right now and it's too much work to Swype the answer out; hopefully someone else can answer.

Please provide more details, like how many Broodlings a player owns, and how many of them are hallucinations, and what they will be used for, and why you need them to be hallucinated.

Creating the unit for a player and then giving it to Player 12 should do what you want. Also, health detection can't tell which player attacked the unit, so that would not be a viable EUD solution.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 23 2014, 5:55 pm by Roy.

Can P12 receive real Broodlings, in addition to the hallucinated ones? Roy posed some good questions as well.

i am still brainstorming the exact effects in the map and how to get to them but the planning is close to completion. P12 the broodlings were initially civillians (thin/small units) in the player's mineral line. the players are given a choice to vote for something that would change further in game and the choice is time limited, therefore the hallucination/broodling.
(consider the the screaming/popping gory and splattering messy deaths of the peaceful civillian and broodling right in their mineral field) the hallucination death effect has a cool effect the players wouldn't expect (hallucination status only detectable by owner), visually and auditory, and the map features a few other protoss elements (and my interest for rare elements of the game used at a pro level - yes, it will be a template of additional audio and visual effects to enhance the experience of regular bw gaming and spectators).
i was also looking for the alliance status (allies & allied victory) to effect a concept of the game to avoid using unit micro (eg. the old-fashioned and unoriginal beacon-civillian method). since hallucinations and alliance provide no score points those would remain unaffected too. i was also interested in spell effects triggering certain audio samples, for example a dark archon that has casted maelstrom for the first time would cause the "thoughts in chaos" clip to play for all spectating players. storms, optical flare, lockdown and similar spells, i am guessing these can all be found in the EUDs from what i have read till now. another question is if they can be activated only when a player's screen is positioned to display the spell/effect...?
i guess it would be very complex and a big block of triggers, locked locations, coordinates and equations for the simple task but it would still be effective. this way i could make the units say their intro speeches each time a spectator sees the unit trained.
a group of help/guidance messages will appear for anyone that wants it to - i wanted the kill kakaru method to trigger this but since i ran into the abovementioned troubles, and of course we don't want everyone to vigorously keep shooting the reappearing poor little kakaru. i will integrate it by a keystroke trigger, all the links are paying off.
i'll ask another since im here - well now we know that you can't create doodads, and we know that even the original staredit has a 'set doodad state' effect, is it possible to edit these sprites of dark swarm, recall, psionic storm, and whatever else, to make them appear again besides the first time they appeared at 0:00 and were gone without a trace?

to answer your questions (if those were in fact questions) yes, in my experience you can create any neutral unit that you can create for all the other players and it will remain in the game even when played in other modes than UMS (i have seen this in iccup maps - you often see zerg eggs/neutral buildings usually to block something, correct me if i'm wrong; though it didnt work when i just tried in my own map), but they do appear in ums, hallucinated and retaining all other unit properties. the recall/ds sprites appeared in the tvb mode too though. (not sure about the kakaru because i didnt have time to chase it around, but most likely)

btw thanks for the input on hypertriggers so far though it is still unclear. so all you need to do is add a trigger with 0ms timers and expect it to make every next trigger function immediate? i saw the WASD marine had immediate response time, as did the keystroke file, tested in my own and have periodic delays though, the wait block page cleared this up but it is still not very clear to me how to avoid them. i learned and saw that the wait timers work for each player separately - independent/local so thats a start

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Jun 24 2014, 12:47 am by KoKo_PiDeRaS.

So... just use Civilians, and use a death counter timer for when they expire, and when they do, remove them and create hallucinations where they were standing. It's as simple as "Move Location_X on Terran Civilian, Remove Civilian at Location_X, Create 1 Hallucinated Scourge (or some other unit) at Location_X, kill Scourge at Location_X" and repeat for as many Civilians as you have, and you have your neat effect without having to worry about the nuances of hallucination detection.

This isn't easy to detect unless you know exactly which unit is going to have the status effect.

It is possible in theory to play a wav based on screen position, but to use it dynamically like you describe is not practical. You can use "Center View" to force the player to look at the spell/effect if you wish.

It wouldn't be complex, per se, but it would require tens of thousands of triggers. Like I said, it's not practical.

You could use Key Press detection to have players hit a key on their keyboard to get a Display Text Message if you wanted. EUDGen can generate the triggers for you.

No. You'll notice you said "Sprites" and not "Doodads" when describing these abilities. Doodad State is meant to be used to raise/lower doors and disable/enable traps (though it has quirks when applied to certain units).

To avoid wait blocks, just make sure each player is not running two triggers with wait actions (not counting the hyper trigger) at the same time. You can use death counters to avoid using any waits at all, though, so this should not be an issue.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Jun 24 2014, 12:57 am by Roy.

by your method, the trigger action would have to be used by the bloody death of a civillian, which i want to avoid

what about storms and the such?
yes center screen was a possibility but i dont want to force it on spectators. so it is possible, what if i do it only for a small range of the center of the map and say only for one spell?
so spells like maelstrom would require the code of the unit and can't trigger unless an exact unit is pointed out? what about unit ID ranges (trigger upon spell for any unit as long as the unit is in the game)?

i'll try replacing waits with the DCs when i have more time, thanks for the tips