3 things I want to know. How do you stack sprites, how do you make sprites invisible (is that just disabling it?), and can you stack sprites on top of units.

In an editor, other then StarEdit, simply select your sprite and place it anywhere on the map, this includes stacking. With in-game you have to have a pre-placed sprite and then simply disable it (select the sprite -> properties -> disable) and then with a trigger disable it.


This can be done by enabling it, waiting 111ms, disabling it, wait another 111ms, disable it again, wait another 111ms, then give it to a human player and order it to a location. Note: It actually has to move 1 square.


You will most likely have to center a 1 pixel sized location over top of the unit and then either order it, or use the move, teleport, trigger to constantly move it over the given unit. This works only with unit sprites, obviously it wouldn't work if you were trying to move a mechanical door over top of a unit.

I kinda regret the term "unit-sprites" - they behave much more like units than sprites.

What are they, from a memory standpoint?

In the map, they are stored in the THG2 section, like sprites. But when SC loads them, it creates a unit instead. There are definitely differences from normal units (like initial HP, etc) though.

If you're curious, traps and doors were the only types of unit-sprites Blizzard ever intended for use. When the unit is created, it can take some extra data from the THG2 entry, like if it's disabled or not.

That can be done to anything, unit or sprite.

The only special thing about unit sprites is their ability to begin in a disabled state(You can see some effects of this here.) and their ability to stack, simply enabling a preplaced disabled sprite will allow it to walk around and other units can pass through it, although it cannot pass through them.

I also noticed while I was making this Cloaked Units Pack that you can either have it disabled (cloaked) or stackable (uncloaked). This was disappointing. I tried a lot of different combinations to try and figure out what was what and I did. If you disable the sprite, via its properties, and then disable it using the trigger in my above post, it becomes stackable. And vis versa. If its not disabled, via its properties, and then you do the enable, disable trigger mentioned in my above post, it will be cloaked. I think its this way. It not, I just mixed them up. In my Cloaked Units Pack I have different units that become disabled (cloaked) and it comes with the easy trigger to cloak anything.

You can mix them Just enable the disabled sprite to make it stacked, and once you do that it becomes just like any other unit, just stacked, from there you just use the cloaking trick and it works just fine.

Orly? I thought that you can only do one of them. Either stacked or cloaked... :?:

Nah, if that were true, the pretty sprite battlesystem by Lovel wouldn't work right.

So if I wanted to stack a sprite on top of a unit, I would have to enable, disable, disable it, then move it to where I need it and have it walk 1 square till it is stacked on the other unit?

The sprite cannot walk onto other units, other units can walk onto it.