I was just thinking of a possible system for aiming, so I wanted to get it down because I'm busy working out several other complicated ideas atm.

I was thinking perhaps you could have an aiming unit which would basically be detected in its orientation with some mobile gridding, a few locs, and some give. Basically you'd use gridding to move a wide column location and a wide row location away from the main unit to detect whether the aimer is above or below, left or right. Then using gridding (say mutas), give all mutas within some loc centered on the aimer to some other player. The distance of the aimer is important, unfortunately, and I've yet to figure that out. but then you'd basically calculate how many mutas were given, maybe center wide row and column locs on it to detect "which diagonal" better, finding where those mutas are. Give would just prevent them from being deleted, and could possibly be useful for other actions if you gridded from there or who knows what.

If you have any ideas how to resolve issues with this, or anything that would definitely kill this, have at it. Even better, if you have the time to make a test map that'd be cool. There is another idea I was going to work on prolly later than sooner, basically creating a physics engine for scorched earth/gunbound style gameplay, aka immobile units lobbing projectiles of different styles. So that idea could go with this too. And yeah, feel free to take any ideas from me, as i don't have much time for mapping as of late, etc etc.

edit: ah yes, i also failed to mention i didn't see this as being a highly accurate way of aiming, but rather a general direction sort of thing.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 22 2009, 5:51 am by StrikerX22.

Just like... have you ever heard of FRAGs?
This seems to have some similitudes with it...

In what order are units removed? Lets say there is a filled map. does starcraft engine randomly pick what units are removed?

Hmm... lets set some more boundries.

Alright, i got hyper triggers.
i have a trigger that states, Always.. remove 1 unit at anywhere.

The map is completely filled... What pattern will the units be removed in? right to left, top to bottom? i think i might test this.

When multiple units are applicable for an action limited to a specific number of units SC picks the leftmost. If multiple units tie at being leftmost it picks the one most recently acted upon (IE most recently effected by give/move/create).

So in your hypothetical map the units would disappear left to right across the map.

FRAGs, yes, I've tested it, though I never looked at the insides. I figure it's something to do with a bunch of tiny inverted locations in the scourge areas? /guess Firing area is a limitation... can't move all those tiny locs around either. But perhaps a similar system would accomplish what I was thinking if it were toned down in accuracy thoroughly. Perhaps they would work somewhat similarly, but the usage is different.

In FRAGs, you move 2 scourges to fire at a point. In my theoretical system, you actually have a unit where you're aiming, and use another trigger to fire. The shot then moves toward the scourge and hopefully beyond in the same direction, using gridding, or it simply records the direction for other uses. The direction is likely not accurate, and would be useful for large collision boxes(locs) only, or some minigame-esque setting where only certain directions have meaning.

@Midget, look at the wiki for gridding (mobile gridding). It's a tad more complicated than simply left to right, when units are aligned vertically.

If that's what you mean Striker, coordinate grids are better. Less lag and a bit more accurate.

Use a Coordinate Grid to find the X and Y values of location A (the hero unit) and location B (the aimer unit) respectively and store them in DCs. When a shot is fired, calculate the slope between the two points (change in Y / change in X) and determine the X and Y position on the edge of the map that is along that line (intercepts and all). Center a location C there. Now create a bullet unit at location A and order it to move towards location C.

By the way, what stands FRAG for?

thank you,