Ok, I've been working on a map recently on StarEdit with basic StarCraft. It's played like PlanetSide or Star Wars Battlefront.

In case you don't know what I'm refering to, I'm talking about one of those games where you have 2 bases, and you have to conquer smaller areas until you reach total domination of the entire map. This usually consists of "hacking" smaller bases, and using them as spawn points for accessiblity.

I'm not sure if I can make the concept any simpler.

Anyway, I'm running into some complicated trigger work, so I signed up and made this topic for you guys to guide me through.

My Issues:(so far)

An Experience System:
I want to make it so that when you destroy large/difficult units, you get more "Custom" points, or in other words, an Experience system. I already worked out a rewards system, but I keep running into loops.

I made it so that when "Current Player kills exactly 1 specific unit", it will "Add 100 Custom points for given player". However, as you can see, I put "Kills exactly 1 unit", which means that it will activate when you only have killed just 1 unit, making you unable to progress through the game, and even more so, if I put a "Preserve Trigger", it will cause a loop, because if you don't kill another immediately, it will keep triggering.

So I have to come up with some action that will nullify the "kills of a given unit". I was on another message board, and they suggested I use an action "Modify Kills of given unit to 0". However, to my knowledge, this function doesn't even exist, yet the concept would be usable.

So I was wondering, is there some way I can make the trigger activate upon you purposly killing one unit (say, like a Battlecruiser), and then nullifying the action so that you can repeat it later?



The "Hacking" System:
The core of the gameplay. Now, I set up everything pretty well. You can formulate turrets on command around the "Posts" and you can take control of the "Post". However, like above, I'm running into the same exact problem.

So essentially, my "Hacking" System consists of a Pylon with a lot of shields. "Hacking" would involve massive gunfire on the Pylon to destroy it. (Yeah, sounds kinda funky, but it was the best concept I can think of).

Here's my problem: I can't get it so that if a given player destroys the Pylon, it would place another Pylon with full shields under that player's control.

Initially, I had it set up so that the player with the most amount of units on a "Port" would activate a switch. Then whenever the Pylon died (no matter who's control it would be in), it would create a Pylon in favor (or under the control of) the player who has "dominated" the area, or has the most units on the plot.

This, of course, posed an issue, as someone could send a mass barrage of Marines to a neutral Post and try to "Hack" it, but I could send a BattleCruiser and wipe the Pylon out in one hit. In logical sense, since I "hacked" the Port until the end, I should have recieved the base. However, using my logic, it would go in favor of the Marines, as they had more forces on that given plot.

So, like above, I'm trying to make it so that the person who is at fault would get control of the base. So if a huge battle is going on near a Post, if I sent a Ghost in cloaked to "hack" the base, he wouldn't be detected, and if I sucessfully "hack" it, it would go in my favor.

Again, I used the same logic:
If a given player kills exactly 1 Pylon
Then create a Pylon in that given player's favor (control)
Preserve Trigger

Again, something needs to nullify the "kill", otherwise, the game will try to create another Pylon in a loop. I did try "Set Score" and made the "Score" to "Kills" and then to "0", but that only changed the "Kill" score, and the game still has the counter that I had 1 Pylon killed in my favor, and would continue to loop. Same thing with the Experience system. I made it so that if you killed 1 Goliath, it would set your kills to 0, and then increase your "Custom" points to like 50.







That's the current problems I have now. I'm sure I'm going to run into some bigger ones, like random AI and whatnot, but I'll save that for a later time.

Any suggestions (such as a better "Hacking" system or something) are highly recommended, especially if you have developed a map using the same formula. I also have like a "Class Selection" System, which is a bit clunky ATM, so if you know how to make like a pop up menu or something, please share. Same goes with my Respawn System.

First of all, take into mind that installation tilesets DO NOT allow for the replacing of buildings ><
Secondly, be sure you have a location over the pylon...

The hacking system seems realistic, and perhaps "firewall" units will be present. Good Work?

The answer to both problems is kills score. That's probably what you were told on the other forum. Note, that you cannot modify kills (1 per kills) but you can modify the score (like 50 - 2000) that starcraft gives you for the kill. Based on the score you can determine which unit was killed.
However, even with hyper triggers kills score based systems can glitch, because they cannot detect units that are killed (almost) the same time by the same player. This happens when you have big armies clashing each other or splash damage.

That's why you might want to use the 'kills-to-cash-perfect' system which reliably counts every single kill. Read the kills-to-cash tutorial to learn more those systems.

But a comment about your hacking system: It would be more logical when you would place a beacon instead of the pylon in the middle of each expansion. Then start a timer and if the enemy manages to bring a unit to the beacon while hacking, reset the timer and stop the hacking. If the timer runs out you gain the expansion.
This obviously is a little more complicated to trigger, but we can help you with any issues that may arise.

A comment about class systems:
There's nothing like pop up menus in starcraft (unlike wc3). You have basically 2 choices:
- text based, which is very tedious to code, choices are done via a selection system, e.g. dropship or 'move-to-beacon'
- unit based, which limits your choices for the gameplay. The selection systems would be the same.

Text based means that you write text on the screen explaining the options and centers your view over the selector so the alignment of the text shows which option will do what.

Unit based it the same but you have to create/remove units at the beacons representing the options and the player has to click the unit to see its name which says what it does.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 1 2008, 11:31 am by NudeRaider.