Map consist of 2 parts - playing field and control panel.
Playing field will be approximately 96x96. All battles and spellcastings will be only at playing field. Spellcaster units like corsair, carrier or scourge can be only at playing field.
Control panel need to select WHAT you want to cast (approximately 30 spells), and then you need to specify (on playing field) - WHERE and WHEN you want to cast it. For example we have templar and defiler, owned by player 11 at control panel. If player 1 move cloaked wraith to templar - spell "storm" selected. Then player 1 can build interceptor and storm will casted near carrier.
You will have some another units (instead of cast selector), so "cloak detection" will not work.
There are 4 human players in the map, every human player have 1 allied computer, and every computer has 3 enemy computers, so "send all units to random suicide missions" will not work correct (for cloak detection).
And I need most simple and user friendly spell casting system.
There are 3 solutions:
1) Queued Corsair Selection System
2) Shuttle + Scourge Selection System
3) Carrier Selection system
1) Queued Corsair Selection System
Advantages:
- Pretty nice and user friendly web placement
- Corsairs are fast
Disadvantages:
- When Current player allowed to cast web, other players need to wait (for example 10 seconds) until they allowed to cast. This is really annoying.
2) Shuttle + Scourge Selection System
Scourge used to show WHERE you want to cast, and Shuttles are "part of control panel" and used to show WHAT and WHEN you want to cast.
Advantages:
- Scourges are fast
- No problems with queue and P12
Disadvantages:
- If you want to cast same spell several times in different places, you need to do many of mouseclicks: Select Scourge, Place Scourge to "place 1", Select Shuttle, Unload "spell" unit, Select Scourge again etc
- Too much of hotkeys (4 shuttle per player if 30 spells needed)
- Additional pain with triggers like "load zealot to shuttle first, then load dragoon" (for correct order of units in shuttle). Also this take time.
3) Carrier Selection system
Advantages:
- No problems with queue and P12
- If you want to cast same spell several times in different places, you need to do not so many of mouseclicks: Place Carrier to "place 1", Build Interceptor, Place Carrier to "place 2" etc. So Carrier can be always selected in this case.
- If you want - you can create system with detection "how many of interceptors built"
Disadvantages:
- Carrier speed sux, so if you need to cast spell at the center of the map, and carrier now situated at borders of map - you need time to go to the center.
So: I prefer Carrier system, but speed is sux. What we can do?
I created system, where you can use turbo mode: if you built 1 interceptor - you can attatch this to spell casting. If you built 2 interceptors - carrier changed to mutalisk, that is fast. You can fly for example to the center of the map, and when you need to cast spells again - mutate to guardian\devo, and carrier appear again.
You can test this system in my test map:
http://www.staredit.net/files/1499/
http://rapidshare.com/files/270676901/CarrierSelectionSystem_0.01.SCM
Are you satisfied to play test map with this system?
Are you have better ideas?
Write you comments there and have a nice testing:)
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Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 23 2009, 10:14 pm by theleo_ua.
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