Any ideas?

Uh, a dropship system? Takes up the most units though.

Be more specific about the situation please. What is the highest possible number of items? Are there any other options (i.e. does it also work as a menu system)? What is the gameplay like? What are the most important aspects? - Can you sacrifice speed for diversity of items and options or not? Can you sacrifice up to 8 units for the shuttle?

http://www.staredit.net/wiki/Selection_Systems

Specifically, I'm making a rather simple AoS that just got a lot more complicated. Players can choose a fighter or a bomber, and then load different weapons. I need a simple yet effective method of selecting what to drop/fire.

Tux - Yeah, I know, I know...

You've managed not to answer any of my questions. Anyway, I'll say this: go for either a factory or a dropship. Factories will limit you with 5 'buttons', dropships will limit you with 9 (8 units + move order). Factory is all-hotkey-able, though.

I was going to go with the factory system myself. Already got gateways set up, but that's not the point. That's the selection system; I need a way to keep track of how many shots/bombs each player has left. I'd much rather have a system that I can use for players 1-3 (left) and players 4-6 (right), instead of running triggers for each player individually, but I don't really know if that's possible.

Systems that I've come up with so far include a seperate death count for each player for each shot/bomb type; that won't really work, though. I'd need 84 different death counters, and that still doesn't eliminate the problem of triggers for each player.

Then I thought I'd use burrowed zerg units as placeholders, but that won't work either - each player will have a maximum of 100 shots/bombs, and with six players that's 600 units. Way too many, seeing as I already have about 700 units in-game for the left and right troops.

Here, I'll post the map...

EDIT: Removed the map. Time goes on, and so does my mind. LvR is officially abandoned... for the time being.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 11 2009, 9:37 pm by ImagoDeo.

Here's a system that's not mentioned in the wiki:
Lets say you have a tech lab. There are eight different abilities you can research at the tech lab.

Each one costs an amount, one through eight. You go to research the first one. It detects that one mineral has been deducted, so it activates ability one. Then it gives the building to neutral, then gives it back to you, to cancel the research.

Some possible problems:
1. Does something get removed from your hotkeys if it's given to a different player and then given back to you?
2. What tech building has the most number of buttons? How many buttons does it have?
3. Do you need minerals/gas for any other part of your map?

Some possible advantages:
1. Lets say you have a spell that takes time to charge. You press the button to cast the spell. Then it waits, doing the research when the spell is charged. When the spell fires, the research gets canceled via "give" and your minerals are reset back to their initial value. This sort of thing allows you to cancel the spell by canceling the research. This works especially well if the spell is something like "gather energy" that lasts until it is canceled.
2. At least six and possibly eight options.
3. Possibly no mousing required.
4. Possibly a fast response time

Actually that is listed. You can't 'give' addon buildings, though. You'd have to use another tech building. Hotkeys aren't lost when triggers give it away and back, but that's a dumb and annoying way to do selections.

If you have strings to spare, you can always use a textual display of inventory item quantities and whatever selection system you want to go with it. Or use mineral patches or vespene geysers or whatever to indicate quantity, or something.



So glad blizzard made things easy for us all.

Oh I missed it. I see it's at the very bottom. Also the thing about hotkeys is good to know, thanks.
It is annoying in many respects, but it's useful if you really need the extra two (or more) options (since the factory system limits you to four options).

Is a better system that:
1. Doesn't require mousing
2. Supports five or more selections

Without EUDs or something, you could either do upgrade detections requiring cancellation (doesn't deselect the building, but still annoying), use a Starport (with up to 5 options, not including liftoff), allow "double-clicking" to double the option possibilities of a single factory or whatnot, or do something with multiple hotkeyed groups.

There might also be stuff you could do with unit orders upon hotkeyed groups (pressing stop and detecting resulting movement behavior changes) and stuff like that, but I haven't really had to use anything like that for what I've needed.

Edit: I'm not sure offhand but does removing the tech buildings required for a given type of upgrade automatically cancel it if in-progress? Seems like it would...

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 23 2009, 1:28 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

I originally posted this in UMS assistance, but it got closed there because I wasn't specific enough. As it is, though, my problem has been solved, so I'm not sure whether to ask for a topic lock or just leave this here for people to debate and discuss on.

Personally, I like to use the factory method, because you can set the cost and the player can cast multiple spells in a row without having to reselect the structure. There are times when that's unavailable, however, so other systems have to be used.

Actually, before close, someone answer my question? Save me some trouble looking it up myself.

Would be neat to have a workable 8+ option hotkeyable select (edit: Without EUDs, obviously).

It continues upgrading.

Darn. Yeah I figured as much. Someone by now would have been using it if it were an option, surely.

I think they would not, though I'm too lazy to check that myself too

EDIT: Ugh, I should sometimes update the thread...

How the Koreans have gotten around this problem, is by having combos.

So to lauch one special ability you'll go wraith wraith dropship valkrie really quick. The wraith wratih dropship will be a code, and the valkrie will execute that code.

The upsides to this system is:
1. Entirely keyboard based
2. Infinite number of options

The downsides are:
1. Non intuitive
2. Hard to learn
3. Requires some degree of apm, and hotkey awareness (if you're clicking the icon to stim your marine, and you have 40 apm, then this is gonna mess you up)

I never thought of using a final unit to execute whatever combo. That's ingenious.

Of course, as you said, it's non-intuitive. One option would be to use EUDs to display text to the player when he presses the hotkeys for the units and tell him what combo will be executed when he makes a Valkyrie. Of course, I still have questions regarding EUDs, but... yeah.

EUD text display has a variety of nice uses.

Norm does this to a similar extent in Hero Sanctuary, you can activate the sub-set of an ability by using the same gateway unit twice, allowing him to effectively double his amount of spells while only using 4 inputs. I think it would get a little more confusing once you start incorporating different combinations of units.

To add to this, on an older project of Mine I worked out a simple 4-trigger system that would allow players to input any combination for a combo spell. Using a gateway, I made any possible combination of 3 units for a total of 19 abilities per character. With this, the only downside was a ~.7 second delay on spellcasting after the input of basic spells. Basically, you have to allow players a delay in case they want to input more, but if you design the game right, it won't even be noticeable. You would have an infinite number of inputs though, especially since you could introduce a fourth button, or combo spells that exceed 3 inputs like mine did.