If you search "protoss" in the doodad list you'll see a bunch of props that could fit as indicators that a place is your own. I was thinking about the "protoss summoning" in particular, which maybe could also fit for Zerg units... Or else, you can still use the "protoss decal", one of its modifications is a hexagon. You can change its color by modifying the HDR multiplier in its properties too.
yeah. had exactly the same. and have no idea why it happens :S
It might be a matter of global and local variables. Sometimes when you use a local variable in a trigger, it just won't work. If you make the variable global, it does.
If you don't know the difference between global and local variables: local is a variable you add in the trigger itself (amongst the Events, Conditions, Actions tree), global variables are those you add as an element in the Triggers window. A global variable is available for all your triggers in your map, local variables can only be used by the trigger were you created them.
Edit: I got it working, I'm not sure what was wrong with it but none the less it works now. Thanks for the help anyways!
When you order a unit to be created for player X through a variable, if the variable array [x] has no unit type defined (like the default "no unit" value, or a unit that is now dead), it gives an error because it means there is no type of unit to spawn for this player. In your case you set the unit type for player 1, but since it checks for EVERY player from 0 to 15, if there is a "no unit" somewhere in the array it will display an error. It's pure logic, he can't spawn a unit of type "no unit type" for player 0, because there isn't any. It would be a paradox.
make a new trigger with a periodic event: "every x seconds" (smaller x = more reactive cpu, but may cause lag) actions:
It could work, but it's not perfect. If the enemy attacking you has few units, and you have plenty, the few units attacking will be ordered to attack too often and, in the end, will spend their time attacking from point to point without actually reaching the many targets (because the trigger will give them a new one too often). If the units to attack are spread through the whole map, it's a nightmare to reach a random unit every X seconds... It could never occur.
To be sure it would work better, you need to add a "wait for condition" at the beggining of the actions list, which will check if the unit you want to order to attack is idle. When it is, it means it's not already attacking something/someone. When it isn't, it means the unit was just spawned, or it has finished its previous task (either attacking a building or making its way through the map). This way, you will never have an attacking unit change its target while already ordered to attack one. In the case it is attacking a building and you send units to stop them, they might even turn against your units. I'm not 100% sure, but a little test will tell.
By the way, in this case the "attack unit" might be better than the "attack position of unit". Attacking position means it saves the current position of the unit it targets, before attacking it. But if the targeted unit moves, the order still applies to the point saved. It will look weird in this case, especially if they wait long while idle before receiving a new order. Using "attack unit" is the only way I know of to ensure the attack order will update in real-time.
I normally bash my brains out for days or even weeks when I get stuck on little things, end up scrapping entire folders of triggers and re-writing them, only to find out that that way didn't work either XD
Quoted for truth. Brainfreeze is our common friend.
It's easy to understand why people lock their map, when you are a mapper yourself. When you spend days and days making your map, just to get it partially or entirely stolen by a poor guy with no future claiming it's his own, you're not obliged to like it... And it happens a lot.
Anyway, about the answers Bibendus gave, thanks. I was pretty sure it was done that way but wanted to make sure. It doesn't seem that hard to make the grab effect, so maybe I'll try something similar in my Smallworld map (I need to place units as pawns on the board, so it's basically the same process). I've never tried to tweak with the ability/command panels though, so I'm not totally sure how you got those tabs working, but anyway it looks good. I have no use for it yet, but if it happens I'll probably keep this example in mind.
Also, no win/lose trigger after one team's fortress has been destroyed, but that doesn't really affect gameplay so it can be ignored for now.
Same here. It happened to me too and I was expecting something epic (like a big "OMG you're so brilliant, here are some fireworks for you!"), but no... How disappointing... :D
Anyway, I didn't see any bug as far I can tell, except with CPU which sometimes kill every unit in a base but don't wait for it to be under control before leaving... So basically they destroy every guy, and they continue their way to the next base. If the mech/hero is busy elsewhere trying to hold another base, nobody stands in the area to protect it and you'll most likely lose it when the next enemy wave comes.
I kind of enjoyed my first play on this map, though it's quite confusing at first (especially using the "deck" area where you need to gather your upgrades) but it turns out to be pretty simple to play. I lost many many times in the first 10-15 minutes though, I'm not sure if it's only because I took the Wraith but it seems a little weak when at first level... Forget it, I must be a total noob. xD
Yep... I saw it today and I played a bit (with CPU because it took too long to get someone to play with). It's not bad, kind of reminds me of Star Battle (I noly played the beta) where you choose between battlecruisers or carriers, and you can play 8vs8 in a space battle, with waves and waves of other tiny ships that you can destroy for money. So yes, the concept itself is not totally new, but the huge battlecruiser with its upgrades directly attached to the hull is definitely a huge plus. The map is a bit small though, and I think the ships won't last long enough (4000 health might be a little too short). The movement of the ship seems to act weird when it turns: when you ask it to go back and forth (like when patrolling), it will sometimes take so long to turn that you can make it move backwards... Pretty sure it comes from the model though, but it's still funny!
But anyway, so far it's not bad at all, I couldn't test all the upgrades but there seems to be plenty of it. A few more powers would be cool indeed. From what I remember of the Star Battle map version I tried, when you came back to your base you had options to buy lots of stuff, including better weapons, armors, and powers (like warping, vortex, yamato cannon etc...). I'm not sure how you plan on doing this here but you definitely should. Something is weird too about the sounds (well, it's not really weird, but enough to catch my attention at least)... For some reason, when you zoom too far away from a battle you can't hear the sounds anymore. There must be an easy way to hear the sounds, whatever is the distance between the camera and the fight on screen... Let's hope the best way is NOT having to edit each sound to switch them to 2D...
Well, I didn't know of this map until I tested it today... It was, well... kind of weird, because I'm not a good player in melee (I'm not even sure I know the counters for each unit, or even all the hotkeys!). I play Protoss 98% of the time and my Nexus was destroyed almost every round, I tried adding a forge+pylon to add photons but it was obviously not the best strategy. I realized later that you can build things over your Nexus and tech tree requirements were changed. There were players with me though, who knew the map and spent all their time building spine crawlers behind their hatchery. Protoss players used their sentries to block paths, and that's pretty much all there was. So basically, I guess it gets kind of boring after 10+ games... It's obviously designed for enhanced players (those stupid guys who have nothing to say except "u noob... press skip" 10 times in a row), but they get bored too easily because there are exploits (exploits are powers/strategies that will work 100% of the time by taking minimal risk -if not no risk at all-). That's something you should just avoid at all cost if you want the gameplay to be fun. So far, as the noob I am, I didn't enjoy the map much, but I'm pretty sure I could apply the same strategy as the other guys and there will be no fun in it anyway. Sorry, it's definitely not my kind of game... :/
This is getting closer and closer to epicness. (...does that word even exist? xD)
I don't know if you want to share it or not, but I'd like to know how you did some features. Well... I assume claiming ground is almost the same process as reinforcing walls (with the cube buried deep and not colliding, or something like that). But I'm not sure how you did the grab system... Is it simply an array where you store the units properties (type, owner, etc...), or is it another method? The drones AI is neat too. I hate having to do these kind of scripts... xD
Anyway, it looks really amazing so far and the UI has something really attractive (I'm not sure how you did that either, by the way). I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy playing it when the first version will be out. Keep up the good work.
I've decided to leave it out as you can't be hit when jumping, and being able to shoot while jumping would cause certain imbalance issues.
It's not as imbalanced as it seems... Rocket-jumping hurts you, and it's harder to aim while moving in the air. So basically, you take the risk of hurting yourself for nothing, in exchange for a second or two where you can't be hit either. A smart opponent will even anticipate where you land and send a rocket right before you touch the ground. Sounds fair enough to me already... ;)
About fullscreen, yes that's pretty much what I meant. Too bad the fullscreen mode is actually hiding so many things. It's a real pain because the hotkeys and some custom menus can't be used, lots of projects (including mine) suffer from this... I've seen some maps with cool UI features in fullscreen though (minimap focused on player and moved in the top-right hand corner), but I'm not sure how they did. Most likely by setting the UI frames opacity to 0 or something like that, but I wish there was a better way. I agree, Blizzard should improve the UI customization.
I'm not sure you plan on doing this, but keeping the ability to shoot while rocket-jumping would be awesome. The railgun is a nice touch too (looks like you're getting closer to Quake and/or UT :) ). I like the UI (both pre-game and in game), it's clear and simple though I'd rather make the game in fullscreen mode. Does the score counter (the text next to the leaderboard) still shows up if you switch to fullscreen? I know leaderboads don't, but I was just wondering if you can display something which can still be seen while in fullscreen.
here a example:
pick each player in PGX group (player1=x)
if player X = Assassin hero
Run (Assasin skill tree UI) (120xDialog items)
if Player X = Firetrooper hero
Run (Firetrooper skill tree UI) (120xDialogs items)
You can replace all these "if" with only one "for" loop. The For will compare an integer setting the class of the character (1 for assassin, 2 for firetrooper, etc...) and do an action at the same time for each cases, which saves you lots of efforts (because using Ifs means you need to check manually which case happens when, to who, and with which values). Basically, instead of checking which player is of which class, you will check which class is attributed to who instead. It may look the same to you, but it's not. Don't forget to use switches, For loops, "pick each..." etc... It will save a loooooot of time and reduce your scripts at least by third, if not half. And don't forget to ask your triggers to give instructions via other triggers too. Assign a trigger per class, or a trigger per player, but not a trigger for each class for each player (this is just an example here, but judging by the number of triggers you have, you probably did this mistake more than once). You'll get exponentially more (useless) triggers if you don't automatize the tasks.
Your UI shows 120 buttons in one window? Fine! You need 2 consecutive For loops: one for checking the columns, one for checking the rows... every button will display the matching content linked to an array(integer)[columnmax][rowmax]. 3 elements, just to show 120 things... The 120 things are defined in a "map init" trigger which inserts all the values in the array. The UI actions done, depending on which button is pressed, work the exact same way... It's a bit tricky to remember which of your arrays/integers/booleans/types does what, but name them properly and it will be more obvious to you. This is precisely what I've been doing in my Smallworld map (in a smaller scale obviously), I had a trigger size problem too, but splitting the process in 3 triggers instead of 2 did the job. And I'm pretty sure I can still improve the code to make it work with only 2 triggers, as planned. In your case, despite the number of things to display, it should be easier than in my map. Because in my map, the content of the UI depends on random cards taken from a deck, while your tech tree is something permanent.
Actually, I'd like to see a screenshot or two of your triggers showing the assassin's class UI. I'd like to see how we can help and find how to improve your actual scripts. Because obviously, it needs to or you'll get stuck forever.
The project finally made some progress! I managed to generate the content of each territory randomly (which bonuses it gives, which region type it is,...) and the content of the 2 decks (powers and races). I'm working on the menu to choose your first active race, store it in your hand, and place them on the field. So far, I have one tiny issue left that should be dealt with very soon (the issue being to remove the cost of the combo selected AND display to all players who took what). Players take their turn in a specific order defined at the beginning of the game, and the cards combo is also randomized so each game will be completely different. I'm also planning on adding the expansions cards (moar units, moar powers... moar fun!).
At first I thought I would keep the default models of units, but I'm considering changing them to the actual races from the board game (dwarves instead of marauders, isn't that cute? :D ). Obviously, the units info displayed is not accurate, because I still haven't modified much data. I just added the behaviors (special powers) so that my triggers could understand what to do at each step of the game phases (lots of powers applies on specific steps of a game phase). The terrain is ugly as hell, but as you can guess it's not my priority yet. I'm doing very slow progress, because I never did such an ambitious project on my own, but as far as I can tell it's not impossible... Wait and see! :)
0
If you search "protoss" in the doodad list you'll see a bunch of props that could fit as indicators that a place is your own. I was thinking about the "protoss summoning" in particular, which maybe could also fit for Zerg units... Or else, you can still use the "protoss decal", one of its modifications is a hexagon. You can change its color by modifying the HDR multiplier in its properties too.
0
It might be a matter of global and local variables. Sometimes when you use a local variable in a trigger, it just won't work. If you make the variable global, it does.
If you don't know the difference between global and local variables: local is a variable you add in the trigger itself (amongst the Events, Conditions, Actions tree), global variables are those you add as an element in the Triggers window. A global variable is available for all your triggers in your map, local variables can only be used by the trigger were you created them.
0
When you order a unit to be created for player X through a variable, if the variable array [x] has no unit type defined (like the default "no unit" value, or a unit that is now dead), it gives an error because it means there is no type of unit to spawn for this player. In your case you set the unit type for player 1, but since it checks for EVERY player from 0 to 15, if there is a "no unit" somewhere in the array it will display an error. It's pure logic, he can't spawn a unit of type "no unit type" for player 0, because there isn't any. It would be a paradox.
0
It could work, but it's not perfect. If the enemy attacking you has few units, and you have plenty, the few units attacking will be ordered to attack too often and, in the end, will spend their time attacking from point to point without actually reaching the many targets (because the trigger will give them a new one too often). If the units to attack are spread through the whole map, it's a nightmare to reach a random unit every X seconds... It could never occur.
To be sure it would work better, you need to add a "wait for condition" at the beggining of the actions list, which will check if the unit you want to order to attack is idle. When it is, it means it's not already attacking something/someone. When it isn't, it means the unit was just spawned, or it has finished its previous task (either attacking a building or making its way through the map). This way, you will never have an attacking unit change its target while already ordered to attack one. In the case it is attacking a building and you send units to stop them, they might even turn against your units. I'm not 100% sure, but a little test will tell.
By the way, in this case the "attack unit" might be better than the "attack position of unit". Attacking position means it saves the current position of the unit it targets, before attacking it. But if the targeted unit moves, the order still applies to the point saved. It will look weird in this case, especially if they wait long while idle before receiving a new order. Using "attack unit" is the only way I know of to ensure the attack order will update in real-time.
0
Quoted for truth. Brainfreeze is our common friend.
0
It's easy to understand why people lock their map, when you are a mapper yourself. When you spend days and days making your map, just to get it partially or entirely stolen by a poor guy with no future claiming it's his own, you're not obliged to like it... And it happens a lot.
Anyway, about the answers Bibendus gave, thanks. I was pretty sure it was done that way but wanted to make sure. It doesn't seem that hard to make the grab effect, so maybe I'll try something similar in my Smallworld map (I need to place units as pawns on the board, so it's basically the same process). I've never tried to tweak with the ability/command panels though, so I'm not totally sure how you got those tabs working, but anyway it looks good. I have no use for it yet, but if it happens I'll probably keep this example in mind.
0
Same here. It happened to me too and I was expecting something epic (like a big "OMG you're so brilliant, here are some fireworks for you!"), but no... How disappointing... :D
Anyway, I didn't see any bug as far I can tell, except with CPU which sometimes kill every unit in a base but don't wait for it to be under control before leaving... So basically they destroy every guy, and they continue their way to the next base. If the mech/hero is busy elsewhere trying to hold another base, nobody stands in the area to protect it and you'll most likely lose it when the next enemy wave comes.
I kind of enjoyed my first play on this map, though it's quite confusing at first (especially using the "deck" area where you need to gather your upgrades) but it turns out to be pretty simple to play. I lost many many times in the first 10-15 minutes though, I'm not sure if it's only because I took the Wraith but it seems a little weak when at first level... Forget it, I must be a total noob. xD
0
Yep... I saw it today and I played a bit (with CPU because it took too long to get someone to play with). It's not bad, kind of reminds me of Star Battle (I noly played the beta) where you choose between battlecruisers or carriers, and you can play 8vs8 in a space battle, with waves and waves of other tiny ships that you can destroy for money. So yes, the concept itself is not totally new, but the huge battlecruiser with its upgrades directly attached to the hull is definitely a huge plus. The map is a bit small though, and I think the ships won't last long enough (4000 health might be a little too short). The movement of the ship seems to act weird when it turns: when you ask it to go back and forth (like when patrolling), it will sometimes take so long to turn that you can make it move backwards... Pretty sure it comes from the model though, but it's still funny!
But anyway, so far it's not bad at all, I couldn't test all the upgrades but there seems to be plenty of it. A few more powers would be cool indeed. From what I remember of the Star Battle map version I tried, when you came back to your base you had options to buy lots of stuff, including better weapons, armors, and powers (like warping, vortex, yamato cannon etc...). I'm not sure how you plan on doing this here but you definitely should. Something is weird too about the sounds (well, it's not really weird, but enough to catch my attention at least)... For some reason, when you zoom too far away from a battle you can't hear the sounds anymore. There must be an easy way to hear the sounds, whatever is the distance between the camera and the fight on screen... Let's hope the best way is NOT having to edit each sound to switch them to 2D...
0
Well, I didn't know of this map until I tested it today... It was, well... kind of weird, because I'm not a good player in melee (I'm not even sure I know the counters for each unit, or even all the hotkeys!). I play Protoss 98% of the time and my Nexus was destroyed almost every round, I tried adding a forge+pylon to add photons but it was obviously not the best strategy. I realized later that you can build things over your Nexus and tech tree requirements were changed. There were players with me though, who knew the map and spent all their time building spine crawlers behind their hatchery. Protoss players used their sentries to block paths, and that's pretty much all there was. So basically, I guess it gets kind of boring after 10+ games... It's obviously designed for enhanced players (those stupid guys who have nothing to say except "u noob... press skip" 10 times in a row), but they get bored too easily because there are exploits (exploits are powers/strategies that will work 100% of the time by taking minimal risk -if not no risk at all-). That's something you should just avoid at all cost if you want the gameplay to be fun. So far, as the noob I am, I didn't enjoy the map much, but I'm pretty sure I could apply the same strategy as the other guys and there will be no fun in it anyway. Sorry, it's definitely not my kind of game... :/
0
This is getting closer and closer to epicness. (...does that word even exist? xD)
I don't know if you want to share it or not, but I'd like to know how you did some features. Well... I assume claiming ground is almost the same process as reinforcing walls (with the cube buried deep and not colliding, or something like that). But I'm not sure how you did the grab system... Is it simply an array where you store the units properties (type, owner, etc...), or is it another method? The drones AI is neat too. I hate having to do these kind of scripts... xD
Anyway, it looks really amazing so far and the UI has something really attractive (I'm not sure how you did that either, by the way). I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy playing it when the first version will be out. Keep up the good work.
0
It's not as imbalanced as it seems... Rocket-jumping hurts you, and it's harder to aim while moving in the air. So basically, you take the risk of hurting yourself for nothing, in exchange for a second or two where you can't be hit either. A smart opponent will even anticipate where you land and send a rocket right before you touch the ground. Sounds fair enough to me already... ;)
About fullscreen, yes that's pretty much what I meant. Too bad the fullscreen mode is actually hiding so many things. It's a real pain because the hotkeys and some custom menus can't be used, lots of projects (including mine) suffer from this... I've seen some maps with cool UI features in fullscreen though (minimap focused on player and moved in the top-right hand corner), but I'm not sure how they did. Most likely by setting the UI frames opacity to 0 or something like that, but I wish there was a better way. I agree, Blizzard should improve the UI customization.
0
I'm not sure you plan on doing this, but keeping the ability to shoot while rocket-jumping would be awesome. The railgun is a nice touch too (looks like you're getting closer to Quake and/or UT :) ). I like the UI (both pre-game and in game), it's clear and simple though I'd rather make the game in fullscreen mode. Does the score counter (the text next to the leaderboard) still shows up if you switch to fullscreen? I know leaderboads don't, but I was just wondering if you can display something which can still be seen while in fullscreen.
0
@llou: Go
These models remind me of NWN and NWN2... Are they inspired/taken from these games? :)
0
You can replace all these "if" with only one "for" loop. The For will compare an integer setting the class of the character (1 for assassin, 2 for firetrooper, etc...) and do an action at the same time for each cases, which saves you lots of efforts (because using Ifs means you need to check manually which case happens when, to who, and with which values). Basically, instead of checking which player is of which class, you will check which class is attributed to who instead. It may look the same to you, but it's not. Don't forget to use switches, For loops, "pick each..." etc... It will save a loooooot of time and reduce your scripts at least by third, if not half. And don't forget to ask your triggers to give instructions via other triggers too. Assign a trigger per class, or a trigger per player, but not a trigger for each class for each player (this is just an example here, but judging by the number of triggers you have, you probably did this mistake more than once). You'll get exponentially more (useless) triggers if you don't automatize the tasks.
Your UI shows 120 buttons in one window? Fine! You need 2 consecutive For loops: one for checking the columns, one for checking the rows... every button will display the matching content linked to an array(integer)[columnmax][rowmax]. 3 elements, just to show 120 things... The 120 things are defined in a "map init" trigger which inserts all the values in the array. The UI actions done, depending on which button is pressed, work the exact same way... It's a bit tricky to remember which of your arrays/integers/booleans/types does what, but name them properly and it will be more obvious to you. This is precisely what I've been doing in my Smallworld map (in a smaller scale obviously), I had a trigger size problem too, but splitting the process in 3 triggers instead of 2 did the job. And I'm pretty sure I can still improve the code to make it work with only 2 triggers, as planned. In your case, despite the number of things to display, it should be easier than in my map. Because in my map, the content of the UI depends on random cards taken from a deck, while your tech tree is something permanent.
Actually, I'd like to see a screenshot or two of your triggers showing the assassin's class UI. I'd like to see how we can help and find how to improve your actual scripts. Because obviously, it needs to or you'll get stuck forever.
0
The project finally made some progress! I managed to generate the content of each territory randomly (which bonuses it gives, which region type it is,...) and the content of the 2 decks (powers and races). I'm working on the menu to choose your first active race, store it in your hand, and place them on the field. So far, I have one tiny issue left that should be dealt with very soon (the issue being to remove the cost of the combo selected AND display to all players who took what). Players take their turn in a specific order defined at the beginning of the game, and the cards combo is also randomized so each game will be completely different. I'm also planning on adding the expansions cards (moar units, moar powers... moar fun!).
...Time for some screenshots! :)
http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/764/screenshot2010120422140.jpg
http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/5887/screenshot2010120422141.jpg
http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/8537/screenshot2010120422142.jpg
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/8650/screenshot2010120422145.jpg
At first I thought I would keep the default models of units, but I'm considering changing them to the actual races from the board game (dwarves instead of marauders, isn't that cute? :D ). Obviously, the units info displayed is not accurate, because I still haven't modified much data. I just added the behaviors (special powers) so that my triggers could understand what to do at each step of the game phases (lots of powers applies on specific steps of a game phase). The terrain is ugly as hell, but as you can guess it's not my priority yet. I'm doing very slow progress, because I never did such an ambitious project on my own, but as far as I can tell it's not impossible... Wait and see! :)