Alright, not all that tough to do...problem I'm running into is that it is hard to make a GOOD one. So far, standard sunken defense map, and if you wall, the units get pissed off an attack, however they don't attack if they can make their way through the maze. What I want, is incase someone walls as a backup, and the units never actually reach it, I still want to take points away from the player who walls.

Some of my failed ideas include have a long location follow an observer, however this only works if the user sets a straight wall, if they stagger it, it wont work. It could also potentially penalize people who didn't wall. I have also thought of sending a unit through, and if they don't reach the end of the maze in a certain amount of time, then they lose a point. However, if the player saw this unit, they could kill the wall to let it through and then wall back up. So I was thinking a cloaked unit. However all cloaked ground units would attack (dark templar is it really)

So I'm running out of ideas on how I could do this... If anyone has an idea, I'd appreciate hearing it.
Thanks, sharf

My advice is to stop trying to make starcraft conform to your ideas. Let your ideas come from starcraft's limitations.

Design a new game. The old game has severe limitations which can't be overcome. You can always guarantee that there will be a wall by not allowing unit to walk on certain terrain. If you want to force a maze, and not allow for people to be creative in their mazes, you can create terrain which units aren't allowed on as the level starts (if they are on that terrain, they are moved away to a non-walling location).

You might be able to create a grid which knows exactly how far apart units are and store them into an array. If you can figure out how to get the array to detect when you have neighboring units walling, and the wall connects on both ends of the path, then you can deduct points. You'd either have to disallow buildings or air units for this to work well.

You can also just have the computer unallied, give a limited number of invincible units, and have the rest be lurkers/air units.

Finally, a cloaked stacked unit would be able to make it through easily, and if you give it to player 12, it won't attack ever.

I've seen some defenses have an unbuildable line of tiles on the edges, thus making it impossible to wall, but severely limits mazing. I believe one such map is Lurker Defense. This also presents the "box-in" method for those determined to wall in some way.

I think when you said "all cloaked ground units would attack" you meant "wouldn't attack." A solution to this would be to have a location center on the cloaked unit when the unit leaves the location. If you know how to use inverted locations, this would be helpful. Otherwise, use a 1-pixel location. Have a death counter constantly adding when the unit is inside the location, and reset it to 0 and recenter when it leaves. This way, you can detect when the unit is standing still (caused by a wall) when the death count is a high number. The higher the number, the longer the delay before the consequences of walling, but the more accurate it will be (if the number is too low, a player could be detected as walling when really they just have an impressive maze; also, if the cloaked unit is moving with the creep spawns, the creep could halt the templar's movement).

Another method is to disable building while a creep run is happening (i.e. removing the worker). This way, the run check idea couldn't be foiled by a build after the anti-wall test.

You could just use air units for your levels where people can gather enough supplies to form a wall. For your first few levels, you could use ground units assuming the players won't have enough materials to form a functional wall in time.

Other than that, the best method would be to do what Individual Lurker Defense did, and go around your "playing field" with un-buildable terrain as to allow enemy units to run past -but players can still, like I do, form a box in the middle of the play area and then "capture" the enemy units inside of it.

Making starcraft conform to my needs is what I do best.

In regards to what I said, I did mean all cloaked ground units attack, and by that I mean they all have weapons, the only ground unit I can think of that doesn't attack, is a civilian, or critter. And they don't cloak. The problem is I don't want the dark templar to attack the maze....which I completely forgot player 12 doesn't attack, so I'll probably use that. The plan is that every 5 waves, send a wall tester through the maze, and if it does not reach the end by the time the next wall tester is sent (5 levels later) you lose points, and the next one is sent. The idea is that you can wall, it's not against any rules, BUT you will lose points for it. It is possible to still win and wall (hard to though) Because anyone that walls early, will get their defense eaten by the creep, because they will attack as they go through, so the wall detector wont do much, because the creep will destroy it. However if the creep gets killed by the end of the maze, where the player has a wall for backup, they will lose points due to the wall detector, but wont lose any sunken colonies due to the creep.

Thanks for the player 12 thing...I forgot about that, going to test now.


also I don't want to punish boxing, or anything, I want to punish walling making it impossible for the units to progress. I don't want to use the unbuildable terrain because that can be buggy, and it doesn't punish the player in a way that suits my map.

http://www.staredit.net/files/431/
http://www.staredit.net/files/443/

These two maps may help.