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First question is this. I have a trigger that creates a spidermine in a location whenever a player brings an SCV to a beacon. Problem I'm having is when you do this, the mines don't really spread out much, they clump on top of eachother. They will also sometimes start to pop up to hit an enemy, and the whole lot will come up and just beep like they are going to attack, but they don't actually attack unless the unit comes literally on top of the mine. So the question is a) how do I stop the clumping? b) how do I get the mines to just attack without beeping like that.

Second question is related to the spider mines, but is about vision. Is it possible to give a player vision of part of the field, but not allow that player to see spider mines or cloaked units hidden there? Right now I have the little vision units set on the field but it reveals the mines so when the enemies come up to them they start to attack before the mines can begin to react. Can this be prevented?

Thanks ahead of time.

If u want non-clumped spidy mines, u have to make alot of locations....

Your second one can most likely be granted with a very advanced editor such as StarForge. I dont have a really advanced editor, so some1 else will answer that one. yet im not fully sure...

Well guess I'll have to deal with the spider mine clumping problem because the trigger is a basic straight forward trigger, you bring your SCV to the beacon/warp, SCV dies, spider mine spawns. Not sure I want to delve into random triggers for this, if that is possible.

a1) You could utilize a center on unit location, and place a mine whenver the unit leaves that location. A larger location means that the unit would have to move further to create the mine.

a2) You could create a deathcount trigger that adds to a counter. When this counter reaches a certain number, you could center a location on the unit dropping the mine and place a mine.



b1) You could disable vision for all players for each and every player, and place map revealers for computer players tied to them.

b2) You could unshare vision for all active players.

b3) You could use non-detector units.

well, to create the mines without clumping, you could utilize a grid type system. So, have it create the first spider mine. Then, after that trigger, make another one that says, Player X has at least 1 spider mine at location & Player X has at most 2 spider mine at location. Then, each time, create a zergling, then the mine, and remove the ling. Just do that for however many spider mines there are, and it should work.

Also, check the tutorials section on the Grid System.

WE do not HAVE TUTORIALS FOR EVERYTHING!! But LegacyWeapon likes to believe we do... http://www.staredit.net/index.php?act=tutorials

A grid-type system, as Vodka said, is good for this kind of thing, but is quite complicated to implement, even if you understand how to use it.
You could let players choose where their spider mines go - that would be a simple solution, though I don't know whether it will work in your map.


The mines should attack as normal if they are not clumped on top of each other.
If you want them not to make any sound at all, turn off your speakers. jk:P
Or use the action "mute unit speech".


Players can't see cloaked or burrowed units of players not sharing vision with them (which may include themselves), unless they have a detector nearby.
So if the spider mines are for an enemy player, you shouldn't be able to see them.

If you don't want to be able to see your own spider mines, then you have to use the AI script "Turn off shared vision for player" so that a player can't see their own units, then give them vision through another player without detection, using "Turn on shared vision for player".

Thanks a lot to all of you for your comments. I think what I may try to do is use a switch system for every player where there would be like a grid like area of locations. Player brings his first SCV to the beacon, activates switch 1, dies, then places a spider mine at location 1, then activates the next switch for that player which would place it at location two. Or something like that. I'm not sure how I'll do it, but I'll figure it out I think. I'll have my friend who has been working on this with me come over and work on it. That's probably the more complicated thing that hasn't been done at this point for the map.
Thanks guys.

Do this...

- Center location "mine create" on SCV owned by Current Player
- Create 10 Ultralisk at "mine create" for Current Player
- Create x Spider Mine at "mine create" for Current Player
- Remove all Ultralisk for Current Player

The ultras block the mines from clogging the SCV, the mines are made away from the SCV, then the ultras are gone, remaining unseen.

To prevent clumping you can just first

create X amount of lings
center location "mine create" on one ling
remove 1 ling and create a mine

and repeat until all lings are gone. This should give you a square of mines.

devilesk ... that does nothing different than Create X mines except take more time and triggers. Use Moose' method.

For Moose's idea, instead of Ultralisks, why not use the bigger Carriers or Battlecruisers? To prevent the central unit from spawning a Spider Mine right next to the SCV, create a Scout or something BEFORE the Carriers/Battlecruisers and immediately remove the Scout to create a hole.

I think that the problem is that the mines tend to become stacked on top of each other, because they are created on top of previously burrowed mines. MiniMoose's method will spread out the mines a bit if you create them all at the same time, but you'll still have the problem of the stacked mines if you create them separately at the same place.

I think that this implies that the location where the mines are is a fixed location not near the scv - not a moving location following the scv. If that's right, then Moose's idea won't work.

PCFredZ: Moose's idea is not to create the mines under each ultralisk, it is for the ultralisks to take up space, and therefore force the mines to spread out away from the scv.

Arconna: One way to stop mines from being created on top of one another is to cycle through each one, placing a unit like a dark templar on top of each one before creating the new one, and then removing the dt's afterwards.

A system similar to yours could be to have a grid of burrowed units (e.g. zergling) for a neutral player (not enemy to anyone) at the spider mine location, and each time you create a spider mine, you center a location on a ling, and create the mine on top of the ling, then give the ling to another player. That way the mine will be on top of a different ling each time. When you run out of lings you can just give them back to the first player.

You're correct about how the thing is set up. The SCV goes to a beacon/warp point in a base that is separate from the track where the spider mines would spine, which have their own location. So putting a mine where you place the SCV won't work. You're also right that I want to spawn them one at a time, but somehow I don't think this is going to work, because after a time, unless I have like 100+ locations, the mines are going to pile up on eachother. The SCV's are supposed to spawn like last line defense stuff for if you start loosing, you can just create some spider mines to buy a little bit of time, which is a neat idea, but I don't know if it will work and I may be forced to remove the options all together, just for the fact that it really puts a dampener on everything. I'll still look at how to do this, but the problem with having the lings burrowed for what you suggested is that the map cap on this map fills up far too fast (there are roughtly about 800 units already placed on the map at the start, add in scv's or probes and whatever people spawn, etc etc). So those lings would take up a little bit of that and might cause problems. This would all just be easier if there was a stupid command that just said "spread units across location", but alas there isn't.
Thanks everyone for suggestions, I think I'll continue to toy with it to see if there is a way I can do it without using lings or anything, but for now I'll remove the option for the final version. I might not use it for this map and instead for my other project that my friend and I are buidling from the ground up (this project we're just fixing an already existing map that just sucked and needed work).