Hi all,

I recently picked up SC2 because of Blizzards combo deal, and I'm giving mapping a crack. I started out by making a hero unit that levels up, has attributes, abilities, inventory, equipment etc. So far, so good, except that I have hit 2 snags that I want to deal with before I start trying to make a real map.

The first is that I want one player to have a hero unit, and the other players not to, but the other players can't see that the one player is a hero. So far, I have been successful at hiding the behavior with flags, but that hides it for everyone, including the controller. Does anyone have any ideas how to accomplish this?

My second snag is in the look of the item containers. I have one for the inventory, and one for equipment. The problem is in adjusting the look of the equipment interface. I want to have slots for different equipment, and I want to have a background to represent the pieces, so say, the helmet slot is above someone's head. So far, I have found that the only way to adjust the size of the interface is to adjust the location of inventory slots (their column and row) which means that to have a large interface means I need to have an awkward slot, or a dummy slot. I have also gotten a unit model to work, but it covers the slots, and doesn't go behind them. Any thoughts here?

My other question is about manipulating in game chat. My end goal is to make it so that players can't hear each other without units being within a certain distance. Is this possible?

Thanks all, sharf.

Unfortunately there's no other way, as far as I can tell. The only other thing I can suggest is making every unit a hero based on behavior flags, so they all look the same at least when they're selected.

The inventory system is definitely clunky. You can either try to manipulate it so that the slots are next to the location of the armor piece (i.e. next to the head, on the sides of either arm, etc.) or you can try to create an inventory system through triggers. The latter option is much more complex, but gives you the most freedom ultimately. If you've seen Ahli's Diablo - Mortal Shrouds map, he does that inventory through triggers.

I'm assuming this is possible, but I'm not familiar with manipulating the game chat and I'm guessing it would be very limited. It would probably involve disabling in-game chat in some way while you are not in the same region as another character (as in have a region follow your unit, and enable chat only when another unit is in it as well). That said, I don't think you can limit who speaks in chat so it would still be the same global chat for anyone to see while it is enabled.

Thanks DevliN,
That's kind of disappointng but I think I can work around it. My issue with making everyone a hero is you could clearly see who has the higher level. That also means that i can't hide the unit stats from other players either...

As for the inventory, I'll have to give that a look.

Thanks again!