I'm trying to make spells that target units in a certain radius. These sort of spells work fine as long as each player owns a maximum of one of any unit type within the target area. The problem is when you want a spell to target a large number of cloney enemies. Like if I wanted to kill all Hydralisks within a certain area and create a Corsair at each Hydra's location and kill it for it's blue explosion effect first. Well, how would I move more than one location to another location without them all going to the same unit?? What I mean is, I'd like to have one 1x1 location go to each unit within the radius of effect. But if the units are all the same, I don't see how I can do this. I saw something about movable grids that showed how StarCraft always selects units in an area in the same order, but I'm not sure I completely get the whole system yet. Is it Southwest, West, Northwest, South, North, Northeast, East, Southeast? What about Center? Does that come after South, but before North? How can I prevent one of those "Unplaceable Unit" messages? Also, if different units are in different spots each time the spell is cast, doesn't that make the moveable grid technique invalid for this application? Is there another way of doing what I want to do here?

Also, what's up with the Minerals and Karma? o_O

Oh your god. That's a lot of question marks. You should number them or something...

The easiest way I know of moving locations on the same types of units is to move 1 location on a player-specified unit, then change the owner of the unit. For example:

Move location labeled "loc1" on "Zerg Hydralisk" owned by player 7 at "SpellRadius"
Give 1 "Zerg Hydralisk" owned by player 7 at "SpellRadius" to player 8
Wait for 1 millisecond.
Move location labeled "loc2" on "Zerg Hydralisk" owned by player 7 at "SpellRadius"
Give 1 "Zerg Hydralisk" owned by player 7 at "SpellRadius" to player 8
Wait for 1 millisecond.
Move location labeled "loc3" on "Zerg Hydralisk" owned by player 7 at "SpellRadius"
Give 1 "Zerg Hydralisk" owned by player 7 at "SpellRadius" to player 8
Wait for 1 millisecond.
... Etc

Obviously there would be a short delay before the hydras would die, and if it's a 1x1 location there's a chance a hydra can walk out. I'm too tired and lazy to invent a perfected method for this spell of yours, but this is the general idea. You probably don't need any waits in this trigger, but seeing how I haven't performed it, I added them just to be safe

As for the grid question:

[3] [6] [9]
[2] [5] [8]
[1] [4] [7]

This is the order of which a location moves on a unit (or any action that requests "1"). Basically, the unit closest to the bottom-left corner of the map will be the first choice, while the unit closest to the top-right of the map will be chosen last.

"Unplaceable unit" messages can almost always be prevented, but you need to tell me why you're getting these messages in the first place! If your spell is over a large radius and it can't place corsairs, tough luck; you can only make so many air units in a concentrated area, and if you try to make too many, you'll get that ever so annoying message.

If there's another way, I haven't thought about it yet. The only thing that you could consider changing is the effect of the spell...

Finally, minerals are gained by posting and being active in the SEN community. You can spend minerals to buy the right to have a signature or avatar. You can disable this if you don't like to have fun (like me) with posting stuff. Karma is just if you're good or bad, really. If you flame/spam, you get bad karma; and nobody wants that.

[quote=Roy]Oh your god. That's a lot of question marks. You should number them or something...[/quote=Roy]

Yeah, usually I do number them when I have a LOT of unrelated questions, but these all seemed to be kinda the same issue in my mind so I didn't, haha.

[quote=Roy]Move location labeled "loc1" on "Zerg Hydralisk" owned by player 7 at "SpellRadius"
Give 1 "Zerg Hydralisk" owned by player 7 at "SpellRadius" to player 8
Wait for 1 millisecond.
Move location labeled "loc2" on "Zerg Hydralisk" owned by player 7 at "SpellRadius"
Give 1 "Zerg Hydralisk" owned by player 7 at "SpellRadius" to player 8
Wait for 1 millisecond.
Move location labeled "loc3" on "Zerg Hydralisk" owned by player 7 at "SpellRadius"
Give 1 "Zerg Hydralisk" owned by player 7 at "SpellRadius" to player 8
Wait for 1 millisecond.
... Etc

Obviously there would be a short delay before the hydras would die, and if it's a 1x1 location there's a chance a hydra can walk out. I'm too tired and lazy to invent a perfected method for this spell of yours, but this is the general idea. You probably don't need any waits in this trigger, but seeing how I haven't performed it, I added them just to be safe
[/quote=Roy]

I thought about doing something almost exactly like this a few hours after I posted actually. Only in my version each unit was moved, not given to another player. I'm glad you posted this, cause it confirms my suspicion that this technique can be used. That's a HUGE relief, because it's an awesome spell...well, THEY'RE awesome spells, the ones that use a radius... Just one thing though...don't you mean:

"Move location labeled 'loc1' on 'Zerg Hydralisk' owned by player 7 at 'SpellRadius'
Give 1 'Zerg Hydralisk' owned by player 7 at 'loc1' to player 8
Wait for 1 millisecond. etc."?

Also, when I looked at that I saw the dreaded 'wait' and instantly started thinkng about how I could work around it, haha. Then you confirmed what I was thinking again. I really hope I don't have to use 'wait' commands. They suck. The Human Eye is faster than people think. I have a map I downloaded where a unit is replaced with another different unit with a different color and a five ms 'wait' is involved before it switches back. That's it, just 5 millisecondss and it's still painfully obvious what's happening. I'm not really worried about enemies moving outside of the locations within that frame of time, except maybe Zerglings...they might be fast enough, but not Hydras I don't think.

[quote=Roy]"Unplaceable unit" messages can almost always be prevented, but you need to tell me why you're getting these messages in the first place! If your spell is over a large radius and it can't place corsairs, tough luck; you can only make so many air units in a concentrated area, and if you try to make too many, you'll get that ever so annoying message.[/quote=Roy]

I, personally, have never made a map that suffered this predicament. However, I've played MANY such maps on Bnet. Apparently people don't plan ahead effectively. That's why I asked. I don't want my map to do that stupid crap to begin with.

I kinda figured out the minerals thing a few hours ago to. I started with -135 min, now I have (had before this post) -111. And posting was all I'd done, so I figured that must've been it. Karma I figured was what it is. Same as most sites that use it really. Also, haha to your "Oh your god." and "not like having fun". I found them amusing.

It can be done easier:

Move Loc 1 on hyd at large loc
Give hyd to P12 at Loc1
Create Cors at Loc1
Move Loc 1 on hyd at large loc
Give hyd to P12 at Loc1
Create Cors at Loc1
Move Loc 1 on hyd at large loc
Give hyd to P12 at Loc1
Create Cors at Loc1
... as many times as you think you'll need it
Kill all cors at large loc
Kill all hyd at large loc

Problem when you do it in 1 trigger: Some excess cors will be created in the middle of large loc (pos of your hero).
If you don't want that, make it in many seperate triggers with the condition "brings at least 1 of <unit type> to large loc" for the 3 grouped actions.
And "brings at most 0 of <unit type> to large loc" for the last 2 actions (kill).

Wait...
what's the point of the wait commands and multiple locations?
For the example you gave, killing all nearby Hydralisks and using Corsairs for effects...

C: Bring atleast 1 Hydralisk to Location 'Effect Zone'
Switch 'Hydralisk Killer' is Set
---
A: Move Location 'A' to Hydralisk at Location 'Effect Zone'
Remove/Kill Hydralisk at Location 'A'
Create Corsair at Location 'A'
Kill Corsair at Location 'A'
...
Preserve Trigger

C: Switch 'Hydralisk Killer' is Set
Bring atmost/exactly 0 Hydralisk to Location 'Effect Zone'
A: Set 'Hydralisk Killer' Cleared

No such thing as having a Hydralisk "escape," although you will get a sort of 'cascade' visual affect where the Hydralisks will die extremely rapidly, starting from the bottom left, rather than just all at once - but to make it quicker, you can make several copies of the first trigger. Each one would check exactly how many Hydralisks are in Location 'Effect Zone,' and repeat the actions as many times as are appropriate ( ex., bring exactly 1 Hydralisk, play actions once, bring exactly 2 Hydralisks, play actions twice, ... atleast X Hydralisk, play actions X-times, where 'X' is either as many as will fit in one trigger, or as many as you predict will need to occur at once ) . If you get enough Hydralisks, then it won't work perfectly - there'll still be a very slight delay between the first X many Hydralisks dieing and the second X many, but because so many are dieing at once, it is harder for the eye to recognize that delay.
Note that because there are no wait opcodes, the entire trigger will run instantly, over the span of a single frame.

Depends on where you're getting them. In some cases, you can't prevent them.
An almost universally effective system, however, is to use a 'buffer.'
For any trigger that may spawn a unit, for which you're afraid you might get a 'Unit Unplaceable,' you create an enclosed area outside the playable region of a map - one per trigger. You have your unit spawning trigger check if there's already a unit in this buffer, and then, if there is, don't spawn another; if there isn't, spawn one and move it to the desired location.
Unit Unplaceables occur because StarCraft won't spawn a unit any farther than so many pixels from the center of a location ( Hell if I know why, or how many pixels this is; except for buildings, where it is always 0 ) .

Oddly, I thought that it chose the closest to bottom left available, and moved gradually up-right, so it'd look like
[6] [8] [9]
[3] [4] [7]
[1] [2] [5]
or
[5] [7] [9]
[2] [4] [8]
[1] [3] [6]
depending on whether it placed priority on horizontal or vertical distance from 0,0.
However, I just made a map in which I placed a 3x3 grid of Zerglings, and tested twice - once centering a location and then killing, then moving to the next, and one with just a large location over all of them, killing them 1 at a time.
Both times, the results I got started in the top left, and resembled your model more.
Although, I just used 5x5, with the movelocationkillpreserve, and got some odd discrepency on the last collumn, as shown:
[01] [06] [11] [16] [21]
[02] [07] [12] [17] [25]
[03] [08] [13] [18] [24]
[04] [09] [14] [19] [23]
[05] [10] [15] [20] [22]

I wonder if we're both just remembering incorrectly, if I'm confused and am talking about the wrong triggers, or if Blizzard's changed it in some recent patch ( which I'd doubt ) .

So far's I know, it's just a display right now, with no functionality. I've not really paid much attention to website feature progress, though...

Oh my God, I just realized something...

If a trigger-spell like this is used and kills an enemy unit will the player get the XP/Kill Score? O_O How would I get the points to them with spells like these if that's all the Player's character uses, but doesn't actually kill a unit with it's own two hands, so to speak?

move the hydralisks into another area instead of killing them. (every player has such an area)
then count them and increse the kill score. (brings 1 *, remove 1*, add * killscore)
you should use hypertriggers with that.

and do not forget to create a bigger exlposion in the hero location to show that they were killed by a spell.

The order in which units are selected is the following, and test this out if you don't believe it.

Always LEFT to RIGHT first, THEN by HIGHEST UNIT ID Along the Y axis.

So if you create 3 hydras, 1,2,3 and they are all on the same Y axis they will select from highest to lowest unit IDs

[1]
[2]
[3]
selection order: 3,2,1

[1][2][3]
selection order: 1,2,3

[2][1]
[_][3]
selection order: 2,3,1


As for your Spell.
1: Use hyper triggers for sure.

2: careful with repeating the same steps within the same trigger block, if there are no hydras around you will get DUD corsair explosions and it wont look pretty.
3: kill the hydra before moving onto the next hydra, you will avoid having to give the hydra to a different player, which might screw up your experience accumulation triggers.

4: I dono how wide your spell area is, but you could make several smaller location which will give the illusion of an outward nova effect.
5: the corsair is a big unit, you may get odd displacement when hydras are close to each other when you create/kill many corsairs on the same trigger run, even if you use separate trigger blocks.

you could use interceptors instead, they cannot be created via triggers but you can still do it

Have an area with Carriers owned by a computer player and triggers to max out the interceptors. they will attack a building of an enemy computer close by.
There will be a location over the carriers so that when interceptors fly out they will be trigger-moved to another location, a pool of interceptors.
There you will also have an arbiter so it cloaks the interceptors.

Now in your spell triggers instead of creating a unit, you will move an interceptor from the pool and kill it. and because the interceptors are cloaked you will only see a pure explosion without the blink of the unit sprite. and because they are small you shouldn't have weird displacement issues where explosions don't quite explode over the hydras.


I hope that helps, and if you want I'll make you a sample map of what I mean.

P.S. The moving units to another location where you can figure out how much EXP the player will get is a good idea. You should really consider that.

Only downside is you forgo bloody bodies and death sounds... and it is possible to make that too if you copy the spell triggers for every unit you expect to encounter, but it would be overkill.

no, ahli meant counting them and then teleporting back (i think). But there's a downside too: hyds won't die at their original locations.

Probably a combination of the above methods would be best.
Use my suggestion with the multiple trigger option and just add the kills score in every trigger:

Human Player
Conditions:
<Spell activated>
Foes brings at least 1 hyd to large loc
Actions:
Move Loc 1 on hyd at large loc
Give 1 hyd to P12 at Loc1
Create 1 Cors at Loc1
Add <hyd kills score = 350> to current player
preserve trigger

Copy this trigger as many times as you need it. Then the last trigger:

Human Player
Conditions:
<Spell activated>
Foes brings at most 0 hyd to large loc
Actions:
Kill all cors at large loc
Kill all hyd of P12 at large loc
<Create/Kill some units at large loc for spell effect>
<reset spell condition>
Preserve trigger

This will give the player the most perfect result:
- Works instantly (which has several advantages)
- Cors / Hyd death animations at the correct place(s)
- Works without hyper triggers
- Needs only 2 locations which can be reused in other spell triggers
BUT
- Need of many triggers (but since they are all copies this shouldn't be a big deal)
- Possibly doesn't kill all hyds (when you didn't make enough copies)

I think I'm seriously beginning to hate StarCraft, and by extension Blizzard, because now that I think about it all of their campaign editors have totally sucked.

Why won't the editors just work? I didn't even have this much trouble with WarCraft III's world editor, and it couldn't do crap either. What's wrong with Blizzard? Did they not have the foresight to know that people would actually WANT to make they're own maps or what? Why aren't spells editable? Why can't buttons be removed without mods? Why do we have to 'work around' everything to try and 'pull off' the effects we desire? Why are the triggers so #*&!@y? Why won't they JUST WORK!?

I tested it and it's true; neither Disruption Webs, nor Scanner Sweeps can be triggered to be moved or created. Nor can they be selected in-game. Nice. Robbed of the few possible effects left. Thanks, Blizzard!

And now I have ANOTHER problem. Cyan REFUSES to show up in-game as, imagine this, CYAN!!!! WHY GOD WHY???!! Look!

http://s267.photobucket.com/albums/ii307/Spaced___Out/?action=view&current=CyanZerg.jpg
http://s267.photobucket.com/albums/ii307/Spaced___Out/?action=view&current=CyanTerran.jpg
http://s267.photobucket.com/albums/ii307/Spaced___Out/?action=view&current=CyanProtoss.jpg

And here's what it SHOULD look like:

http://s267.photobucket.com/albums/ii307/Spaced___Out/?action=view&current=Cyan.jpg

The first time I used the color it looked like the Player color 'Bluish Grey' (the string color listed as 'Cyan' is also actually this color, I don't know if it's coincidence or not), only it flashed a little, now though, it's some odd moss green and trasparent/tileset dependent.

Yeah, I seriously think I'm about to be done with map-making forever. If I have to work this hard to make a game do what I want I might as well be writing a NEW FREAKING GAME. One with a FUNCTIONAL EDITOR.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 21 2008, 7:00 pm by Spaced___Out.

Welcome to SC map making, the elusive art-form that has captivated people with too much time for a decade...

You'll get over it, don't give up.

Haha. The problem solving, work arounds and frustrated moments is why I like map making. Because in the end, you just laugh about it. I use SCMDraft and so far, I have loved every bit of it. It has never produced a problem for me and I can make a few thousand triggers in about... One to Two hours, thanks to it's amazingly well-planned text trigger editor. And... Your skill, in my opinion, is how you make the most of those work arounds. I dislike warcraft mapping because its more of a race to see who can have the least amount of a life and make a few hundred custom spells with it's annoying editor. If blizzard does something similar with SC2's editor and doesn't use a text-based form, one where i can use my keyboard more than my mouse, I'll be po'd and demand that those 3rd party editors are made. Immediately.

And as for the colors, they are different for each tileset. One may have the Cyan colored units, another a bluish green, etc. Aside from the base colors, the rest are dependent on the tileset.

And... Good Luck out there!

Well, there's no use complaining about it.
You must keep in mind that starcraft is 10 years old and that it was a VERY GOOD editor compared to others back then.

Ofc I agree that I'd like many things to be possible, but I got used to it.
And sc mapping would never have become so popular if it wasn't so easy to use.

If you cannot accept it I fear you really have to give up on mapping...

Here's another way to calculate score for your spell.

A:
Center location 'loc1' on 1 Hydralisk owned by player 7 at 'spell area'.
Give 1 Hydralisk owned by player 7 at 'loc1' to player 12.
Move 1 Hydralisk owned by player 12 at 'loc1' to 'Counting'.
Create 1 Hydralisk for player 12 at 'loc1'. [or you could change this to another player to avoid errors, just make sure it's not player 7.]
Create 1 Corsair at 'loc1'.

And repeat.

Yeah, that figuring out how to 'beat the system' is fun...for a while, but the approach of zero customizablity heralds sheer hatred. And I never laugh about technologies not being able to do things that any person paying any degree of attention would have thought to program them to be able to do in advance. I use SCM Draft 2 and I'm extremely pleased with it. It is everything StarEdit SHOULD HAVE BEEN. The problem lies NOT with SCM Draft, but with StarCraft/BroodWar's inability to register some extra features from these MUCH BETTER editors. StarCraft SUCKS!! >_< I agree with you on the skill part, but in ANY game, once you have to start actually modding to get the effects you're looking for it's time to write your own freaking game. Period. The reason I dislike WarCraft III mapping is because the campaign editor is &#*@ing retarded. There's no such thing as a truly blank spell except the utterly worthless 'Channel'. Nearly EVERY SINGLE SPELL you adapt to another purpose retains some kind of deal-breaking characteristic from its former incarnation, like a sound that won't go away no matter what you do. The same is true for characters, buffs (ESPECIALLY) and some of the special effects (of which there, quite surprisingly, are not that many of).


Why do people always say stuff like that? Everyone would always say the same thing about the WarCraft III editor whenever I posted problems I was having with it. Can't anyone understand that there is a NON-relative scale of value? Just because one pile of crap is less stinky doesn't mean it's any less a turd than all the other thousands of turds around it. When customizability approaches 0 the editor in question becomes worthless. And with the StarCraft editors (and it doesn't matter which you're using because of weaknesses inherent in the game itself) your entire repertoire of spell effects consists of:

"Create/Create then Move unit to target location"
"Kill unit at target location"

-_-


In what Universe do you live in which SC Mapping is so popular? o_O Have you ever PLAYED on Bnet? You guys on this forum may make MILLIONS of maps, Hell I don't know. But I can guarantee, unless one of you has made one of the following, I've never seen it on Battle.net:

-Sunken Defense (any version)
-Turret Defense (any version)
-Heaven's Last Defense (any version)
-Lazer Tag (any version)
-Cat 'n' Mouse (any version)
-Sniperz (any version)
-Misc. Zombie Defense (any version)
-Misc. Defense...blah, blah, blah

Because that's pretty much ALL Bnet (where nearly EVERYONE WHO PLAYS STARCRAFT plays in multiplayer - unless I am somehow severely mistaken) ever hosts. About the only time you get a new map is when it's a new version of an old map that someone wasn't satisfied with, and most of the originals on which the adaptations are based are very old maps. And there are MILLIONS of StarCraft players around the world. I don't know, maybe everyone's making melee maps. I don't play those. But I can assure you there are only about 10-15 UMS maps out there (and their multitude of bastard offspring). I wouldn't exactly call that 'popular'. 1:1,000,000 is an EXTREMELY poor ratio of map-makers to general game-players. And I don't find that ratio at all surprising. I very much believe it is PRECISELY BECAUSE StarCraft map-making is so DIFFICULT (not that it's hard to understand, just hard to get it to DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING).

No offense, but all you seem to be able to do is complain. It gets annoying.

Start complaining or don't post. Hahaha

You obviously didn't experience that time. Staredit was a revolution concerning the possibilities it offered. Everyone was HAPPY to acutally have some USEFUL editor. TBH this editor DOES offer a lot. What it DOES NOT offer is modding the game. That's fine with me.

You're right there, it's a bit boring. But as I said, what you demand is modding the game.

If that's your entire SC universe, poor you. IMO they are ALL boring maps. Except snipers / lazer tag maybe, which I play once in a while because it's human vs human which makes the matches more interesting and diversified.

I'm happy that you agree with yourself .