About that rock sprite that appears when you cloak units, exactly in what conditions does it appear? Using this method, I used to cloak a unit and then the rock sprite appeared. Then I changed a few things, maybe locations or trigger settings, not sure.. but while the unit is still being cloaked, there is no rock sprite anymore. I know for sure that it's still the same unit being cloaked and the same terrain.

I know it appears on disabled unit sprites, but other than that I'm not sure.

I haven't used any unit sprites, and disabling a unit sprite did not make the rock sprite appear.

Did you PLACE it disabled? And then enable it? Marines will work.

You mean disable it in the sprite properties? No I only used the disable unit method.
But I can only use units, because of the 500 sprites limit. So if anyone knows how to make the rock sprite appear for units..

I think you have to create a valkyrie and disable it or something but im not sure.

Oh, yeah. Run JYD on a missile turret.

http://www.staredit.net/topic/9192/

I've been playing with this method and there are some limitations with it (alternatively, it can give you 'shadow units').

Much like how when you disable a beacon you need to give the players temporary vision so that it cloaks, the same thing happens with these cloaked units.

That is, if P1 gets a cloaked unit, P2 will see the regular full-colour sprite but can't select it. P2 can see P1 move the unit around and attack. If P2 gains detection of the unit, such as sights it with an observer, it will appear cloaked regularly to P2 and they will now be able to select it as normal. When P2 loses detection of the unit, they will see the unit as the normal cloak distortion effect, but they will also continue to see the shadow of the unit beneith it. So P2 would see a shimmer from the cloaked muta, and beneith it the full normal shadow of the muta.

This 'shadow' effect isn't necessarily bad.

What methods are there for giving players detection? There are the obvious normal options, such as observers, overlords, sci vessals, turrets, spore colonies and cannons. There's also the overmind. But are there other ways to give players detection of an area (ideally permanent detection) without using units?

Presently I've given all necessary players an observer, but it seems the unit-to-be-cloaked needs to hang around within the observer's sight for about 1 full second, otherwise it won't cloak properly. This is a little unfeasible for my map, but I'm assuming that any other possible detection method will also have this time-delay problem?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 24 2010, 1:49 am by Lanthanide.

Yes, you can use the AI Script to share vision. (Turn on shared vision for player X with current player)
After that run AI Script Turn off shared vision for player X with current player)
Sorry if I didn't understand your problem, but I'm sure this might help.

The best way is to give vision. You can time it so that you never actually see the unit, but it is still detected. Ultimo's lost souls RPG has this in it. (but it's not uploaded on SEN anywhere as of right now).

If the units are pre-placed, you can pretty easily start a death count that goes up to 50. Once you know that you have all the buildings disabled (usually around death count 10 or less), turn on vision for the people you want to disable the buildings for. At death count 48-49, turn off vision. That should work, unless you're cloaking a lot of stuff.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 26 2010, 7:29 pm by rockz. Reason: CURSES, ULTIMO

Vision updates every 50 trigger loops, while detection updates every 30 trigger loops? I might have those numbers wrong, if so please correct them, but I use them in the rest of the discussion.

In my particular case, I am spawning these units during game play. Normally when a player loses a unit, a new (random) replacement one will be spawned immediately for them at some location. It seems that if I want to do this cloaking business, when a cloaked unit is being spawned it will take at most 30 trigger loops after the unit has been created until it has been properly cloaked, so the players will be left with a window of 2.5 seconds after their last unit died before they gain control of the cloaked unit?

Perhaps I could organise a stockpile of pre-cloaked units that I give to player 12. Then when a player needs to spawn a cloaked unit, I grab one from the stockpile and give it to them, and create a new one to replenish the stockpile and give that to P12. This could potentially fail if I try to draw from the stockpile very rapidly, but in practice this should seldom ever happen, so a stockpile of 10 units to share amongst 7 players should be completely adequate, along with some "bad luck" contingency trigger that simply skips spawning the cloaked unit for a player if the stockpile is empty.

vision updates every 100 frames, 50 trigger loops. Detection updates every 30 frames, 15 trigger loops. Every 300th frame, detection and vision update at the same time, making it difficult to always detect a unit without giving vision, since you'll lose detection eventually.

It's a very good idea to do the stockpile. You don't want too many units in it, but I don't know how fast you're going to go through them.

I cloaked a queen using this method, and I noticed that the queen does not recharge energy anymore. Did I do something wrong? Any methods to change it back to normal besides using "set energy 100%" ?

Probably because it's disabled.

Cloaked units don't gain energy, iirc.