Which is better to use when playing music in a StarCraft map? Death Counters or Waits? They both have their ups and downs but I think Death Counters would be better.

Death Counters:
-Pros:
Game Speed doesn't affect the rate at which the music is playing.
-Cons:
Can't become specific in timing.

Waits:
-Pros:
Extremely specific in timing.
-Cons:
Uses waits.
Wait blocks.
Game Speed affects timing.

Waits and death counts will give you the exact same effects, except that waits might get wait blocks. Game speed affects both, you just have to set it up to properly work for whatever speed your map is intended(usually Fastest)

Waits are slightly more precise, since they are always rounded up to the nearest multiple of 42, it gives a slightly different effect as death counts with hyper triggers, which make the triggers go off every 84 milliseconds.

Well, that makes my life a lot easier. Now I don't have to edit my music to work with Death Counters. Yeah!

Uhm, actually not... Waits are independent from game speed, where dcs are not. As sounds/music are also independent from game speed you HAVE TO take waits, because with dcs you can only optimize your map to one speed.

But it's possible to detect speed via triggers, so you could take dcs and make 1 trigger for each speed.
Still waits are preferable because they offer double timing accuracy, as Falk pointed out.

Death counters is more reliable because if you use waits, it gets weird with the map if you use hyper triggers. Trust me I speak from experience. I think the death counter is 8700 death sets = 1 second or 870.

I will just make my music HAWT!! I have too much triggerage already. I don't want to make this map complex.

WAITS IT IS!

Hope you don't use hyper trigger.

I agree. The only waits in my maps are the ones that are in my hyper triggers.

I disapprove of anyone who would play starcraft on anything other than "fastest". I also disapprove of waits.

Rockz, while this is true for bnet, I often play at lower speeds when things get hot in campaigns.

Of course I have Hyper triggers, why wouldn't I? I obviously won't have them for the players that have the music playing.
Wait Blocks = FTL!


I tend not to use them, but I want music in my bound.


Well how do you think I can make a death counter work for music that is uneven? ( The song is not exactly 25 seconds or some other even variable ) With waits you can set it to the nearest millisecond.


Hot?

Death counters can time events for multiples of 2 seconds (I guess that's what you mean by even). But when you use hypertriggers (like you do!) you can time multiples of 84ms. Waits can time multiples of 42ms. That's not a huge difference.

Yes?
I don't speak of the built in campaigns, which are pretty easy...

While having exact amounts would be useful in say, ddr maps, it's not absolutely imperative that you have song lengths match up exactly with the death counters. 84 ms is fast, generally faster than your ping is on bnet. If you time it right, you can even edit the file to be in an exact multiple of 84 ms. Considering death counters are much more reliable than waits, it's much more useful.

As for single players lowering the speed, whatever. It's not like you need music in a campaign. If you want music, there's always winamp.

Winamp soundtrack O.o That totally breaks the feeling of a campaign.

I'd love to see you make the following trigger:

If Player brings at least 1 men to 'Loc A'
pause
Display text "Hint: You are entering a cave now. Please alt+tab to Winamp and choose track #03 (cave ambient) from the list"
wait (5000) (oh wait sry you would use a death counter instead )
unpause

Sry rockz, I couldn't resist.

Why would you be going into a cave on a campaign? Also, it's single player, so size is of no importance, hence, no need to loop songs.

maybe I misinterpret the "campaign" definition.

Oh c'mon don't start a pointless discussion because of my joke. Let's just agree on you're no campaign mapper, but rather excel at bnet mapping, ok?

Nude, how are waits independent? Hypertriggers would not run the way they do if they were independent, seeing as they run 12 times a second on Fastest and only 8 on Normal, that pretty much proves that they run based on game speed. As do Death Counts.

I can't answer your question, but I tested it. They are independent. At least for values around at least 1s.

My theory on that phenomenon would be that sc has some minimum time frame dependent on the game frames in that triggers can be checked. E.g. triggers can only be checked every 2nd frame.
That would also explain why wait 0-84 is the same but then in 42ms steps.

I'll make a test map really quick, so gimme a second. Okay, I tested it, and you are right, but IMO, there is truly no problem since everyone tends to use Fastest anyway, but if you're really picky, waits work better at any speed.

Here's the test map:
[attach=886]

The top beacon uses Waits, the bottom uses Deaths. You'll notice that if you put the speed on slowest, the bottom beacon takes massive amounts of time before it loops.

Attachments:

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Apr 18 2008, 8:43 pm by Falkoner.

I know most waits are independent for the player, which is really weird because hypers affect all players... that really doesn't make sense. I think Nude has something with his minimum time frame theory. But that's really weird...

I think it should be obvious that death counts take longer, since they're an actual function that's happening... like as opposed to just a wait which is simply a wait with no data or anything that goes along with it. Death counts mean the game has to actually change something, hence doing more, hence taking a little longer.