basically I'm working on this map which plays like a zombie arcade where you select a perk ( something to add individuality and re-playability) and then select a map and fight off a couple of hordes of zombies. Slightly plays like a ported version of L4D for SC but not too much.

CURRENTLY I'm stuck on how will the players 'HP' work. I was thinking of using burrowed unit(ling) VHP for the players so when you change your weapons you keep the same health regardless. Now I'm not sure if VHP is the best way to do it. I don't know all the systems but is their one that can fulfill this need:

A zombie unit doing different amount of VHP damage (or w/e damage) but without it being preset damage. For example, I was hoping that it would be possible to have a zombie hit kill your burrowed unit and then take somewhere between 3-6 VHP damage and then have a different unit come in and kill your VHP unit do deal 7-9 VHP. I think that's sort of possible but it requires you to have different players per different damage amount instead of a different unit attacking.

TL;DR HOW TO: best way to detect 'damage'

Heres um.... me writing things which kinda outlines my map idea.

Attachments:

Do you want different types of zombies to do different amounts of damage? Or is it that all zombies should do a random-ish amount of damage?

For the former, you could use different unit types for zombies. For the latter, you could use switches to do binary randomization.

I want different type of zombies to do different amounts of damage AND the zombies should do random-ish amounts of damage.

Zombie type one (zealot): 5-7 damage
Zombie type two (Hero zealot): 10-14 damage

Thing is I can't have the player unit have actual health because he will switch weapons (units) and that would cause problems in tracking HP.

Instead of using normal vHP, have the ling have several hundred HP. Then, when the ling dies, kill the player's unit. Basically, ling's health = your health.

EDIT: Get on MSN please.

Well if you know how to use binary countoffs and single switch randomization, you can rig up a pretty kick ass VHP system with ease.

You could first randomize the hit from one unit to another, and then depending on the amount of the DC that is landed on during randomization, you then divide the base amount of damage from a unit (which you decide the amount of via death counts) by a certain factor with a binary countoff. The resulting quotient could then be the amount of DC's (health) subtracted from the unit being attacked. You could have all this done within a single trigger cycle too. You can also reuse your binary countoffs for all players, to minimize triggering done by the mapper.

Here's an example:

Player 1 tries to hit a Weak Zombie.

Player 1 rolls an attack check with single switch randomization. Let's say the DC parameters for this role are between 0-100. Every increment of DCs (the amount of the increment decided on by the mapper) for this roll will represent a different quality of a successful hit, or even complete miss.

So this means that if the player rolls 0-9 deaths, the hit completely misses. If the player rolls from 10-49 deaths, his base attack amount will be divide by 20. If he rolls from 50-89 deaths, his base attack amount will be divide by 16. If he rolls from 90-100, then his base attack amount will be divided by 14.

Lets say Player 1's unit currently has a base attack damage of 100. He can now inflict either 0 damage (miss), 5 damage, 6 damage, or 7 damage.

You can set up more division amounts if you want, and you can change the base attack amount any way you want for any unit. You can also specify which units are applied to which type of divisions of base attacks.

Then just use a simple system for representing HP with DCs.

But.. If you want to have hordes of zombies, it will get a bit tedious representing VHP for multiple enemies at once. You could try using 1x1 pixel locations constantly being moved over enemies that spawn near the players to employ VHP. You could designate the zergling to represent hit points of a zombie (burrowed), and then cycle through and center locations onto the zerglings every trigger cycle, with use of two different computer types -this way you don't have to mess with giving the actual zombie to different computer players every trigger cycle in order to center locations. Once the locations are set, they should be moved to the zergling that they are currently over as to keep the same locations over their same zombies. From here, you can just have different groups of locations represent different types of zombies; locations 0-9 be weak zombies, 10-19 be normal zombies, 20-29 be strong, etc. Make sure these locations are 1x1 pixel width, so that the locations don't "jump" from one unit to another.

Maybe mix in a couple types of zombies that are always 1 hit kills (so you can have a hordish look to the amounts of enemies without bothering to apply VHP to these 1 hit kill zombies).

Lemme know if any of this was explained poorly.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 13 2009, 10:34 pm by CecilSunkure. Reason: Made easier to understand.

Sadly I didn't fully understand fully what you said but im assuming this is pretty much the main idea or what the trigger your explaining does right? I think your thinking that i want to either give every unit VHP or just the zombies to take the VHP. What i want is for the players unit to have VHP. The unit may change but for the most part it will remain at "one at a time". Their is only one unit representing a players 'hero' at a time. Now then, What your talking about is i think exactly what I want except instead I want P1 to take the damage not deal it.

I'm sure i misunderstood. Regardless your way looks like more work but what I'm looking for but if it isn't TZ's idea works just as good.

I just outlined a system that would allow VHP of the zombies, and explained a system for dealing damage. If you only want to have damaged be applied to the humans in the form of VHP, then you can still use what I explained, just make the zombies deal out damage via VHP instead of the humans, and just use the base attack amounts without the division. This is really the simplest way to do what you want your map to do. This will only require 1 single switch randomization set of triggers, and then a couple trigger per each type of unit for damage amounts.

The only thing left to think about is how to initiate each of the zombies' attacks.

And you don't need to bother with the zergling if you are using VHP, because you can just use the trigger controlling the ling's health on whatever unit the player is currently fighting with.

Or, you can throw out VHP, and just do direct hits... You can just Set the player's HP % lower/higher, or Use different units (there're 5 different SC ghosts... u can give different stats for each) ...

s'time to use za Occum's Raz0r .. Ask urself.. Do you REALLY need to use VHP?

How will I know what to set my units % to in the first place? HP % detectable lol?

Cecil I'm having trouble translating what you said in your first post into trigger. Could you post what you said but in trigger form? Sorry for the inconvenience