For those of you who haven't played the map, it's probably one of the coolest bound maps you'll ever find. It's a make your own bound map, but it's not like the other lame ones where there's a few stupid obstacles already made for your convenience, this is a purely explosion dodging bound maker, and it is extremely customizable.
You have a 4x7 grid of Lurkers, that you cast Dark Swarm on to select. When you select a Lurker, a Dark Archon appears above it, and it has been marked as an exploding spot. You can do this wherever you like, and then you cast Dark Swarm on a crystal to change to the next step in the bound, each bound has 9 steps, a series of 9 explosions that go sequentially then start over, in each step you record the pattern of the explosions you want, and when you're done it runs through them all, repeatedly, creating your custom bound.
The map supports 5 human players.
Before you move on, I want you to take a moment to think, how would I do it?
When I first thought about it years ago, I thought of using the same method that is actually used in the map. Which is simply spawning different units under the Lurker depending on which step the player is on, simple enough and effective... But can you think of another, more efficient method?
I like to call it, Binary Boolean Array Storage, BBAS for short I'm almost sure this is not a new idea, however, I have never seen the idea mentioned in forums or in any tutorial, I'm sure it's been used, but rarely.
This method allows you to store what would normally take 32(31 depending on how you look at it), switches, in a single death count, for a single player. That's 248 switches per unit. Interested now? Well, read on
To show you how it works, I'm going to give an example of it in action, doing what is done in the map Bounds, on a smaller scale, a 3x3 grid of lurkers.
Here's how the grid looks:
Now, each section in the array is assigned a different multiple of two, in this case I would assign the numbers in the same order that SC would run through the lurkers as a unit grid, left to right, bottom to top, the locations are only to show the assigned numbers:
Whenever a unit is selected, their assigned number is added to a death, if that lurker is deselected, you subtract that amount:
Now, when the player runs their bound, you start from the highest and go to lowest, seeing if the Death has that much in it, and making an explosion in the assigned spot if there is, so in this case, 273, there is at least 256, so it subracts 256, leaving 17, and creates a DA in the 256 spot, then it runs through, no 128, no 64, no 32, but 16 can go into 17, so it subtracts 16 puts a DA in the 16 spot, now it keeps going, no 8, no 4, no 2, there is a 1, so it puts a DA in the 1 spot. Now you kill the DAs, and you have your explosions!
It's a much more efficient system, using only a single Death Count, rather than using tons of different units. And it can be applied in all sorts of maps.
Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Sep 7 2009, 5:17 am by Falkoner.
None.