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Well, maybe you're not into quirky defense maps. How about a realistic Slot Machine?

Up to 6 players can compete to earn the most money in 10 minutes of game time. The slot machines are real, meaning that each "reel" is comprised of a rotating array of units.

Before anyone starts complaining, I must mention that in order to win money from 2 of the same unit, they must be next to each other! A-B-A will not win, but A-A-B and B-A-A will.

Now, in case you care about the technical stuff:

This map was made way before StarForge (or any similar terrain editor -- only ISOM existed at the time). So, I wrote a small program to translate 0s and 1s from a text file (0 representing one tile, 1 representing another) into data for the TILE section of the Scenario.chk, and then hex-edited it in. If any of that confuses you, don't worry -- it wasn't that simplistic

And in case you are wondering why a 64x64 map with no sounds is so big:

On the map are 6 players. Each has a "slot machine", comprising of 3 reels. Each reel has a rotating array of 48 units. That comes to 864 triggers, just for the reels. Add in over 30 different winning combinations, and there are literally over 1,000 triggers used in this map.
And by the way, GUEdit's trigger load/save craps out at around 760, if I remember correctly... (There was no StarForge at the time, either)

Well, stop listening to me babbling about how hard it was to make, go play the map!!

Edit: Please save the map as Starcraft Slots 1.0FINALp.scx
The filename is totally mangled when you download it...

Why does it say file ureadable because file name is too long?

Because the file name is too long, just change the name and it will work fine. That is just the worst comment ever...

Sorry, it seems as if there are a few characters added to the filename when you download it. I don't know why...

Please save the map as:
Starcraft Slots 1.0FINALp.scx

Thanks.

Ok thanks I got it working. The game is pretty repetitive, to boring for my tastes.

lol. It's a slot machine.......................

Very nice, even though I only played it with my friend it got a bit i duno, more of the same thing for us.
The triggers is what impresess me the most not the gameplay.

I dont' know..i'm not that impressed for some reason. you used over 1000 triggers and for some reason I think i can make the exact same map with a lot less than that =/

but i do like the map and i got 3 zealots and 150 dollars

jeezus christ thim map is cool (and by cooli mean harder to make than how fun it is )seriously i like that i dont have to go to las vegas and iits a better map than ill ever make so im not going to complain

g/j and jezz thats and old map

Impressive, but kind of boring. I think I could make it in alot less triggers as well

Wow. This map is really hard... Or its because i suck at slots.

It looks like one made in a Campaign called Life of a Marine, except that was just a tiny bit of a single map, and it was for one person and numbered at about 30 triggers.

I agree, the game play is very monotonous... aren't all slot machines?

Now, to the triggers:
How do you propose making the same map without the large amount of triggers? I am always open to new ideas and suggestions, and if you do have a way of simplifying how I did it (while still achieving the same result), I would love to hear it.

All there is to it is 1 trigger for each unit in each wheel. 48 for each wheel times three wheels = 144 for each player. A counter (Kills, Custom, etc) is used to change the unit. That's basically it, along with some detection and triggers to make it look better.

I realize that I could have just used less units to reduce the amount of triggers, but I was stubborn.
I think there are 18 different units that you can get, and they are all arranged in an array of 48 units in the "wheel", so as to make certain ones more likely to get and others harder.

(I have the unit array outlined somewhere, I just need to find the paper...)

Thanks for the feedback

so I wasted another couple of hours making a map.

but I wanted to show you how you could go from 1000 to 100.

my map uses 16 triggers total including 4 hyper triggers. there are 11 different units that go through the slots. i can easily add more and subtract, and put it[the units] in any order i want with the same number of triggers.

so I can add 33 more triggers (probably less once I figure out a way) for the win conditions. they're not in the map yet but eh whatever.


there is a bug in the game which i won't try to fix because it doens't ruin the game play. (it just gets the order of the units mixed up once and then thats it)


happy birthday

Pretty different, and in a good way, but it couldnt keep my friends entertained for more than 5 minutes. :T

I appreciate you spending time on this, you really didn't have to go to this much trouble.

Now, in regards to the map... Your method is very similar to what I was originally going to use. However, as you can probably tell, there are two problems with it:

1) The speed. It is incredibly slow, which makes it a heck of a lot easier to win by memorizing the pattern. It also makes the game less exciting, simply because there doesn't appear to be any real "gimmick" -- no fast flashing thingys to draw your eyes to

2) The ability to get a "blank" (i.e. no unit in the square). Makes it seem sort of sloppy...

This put my project on hold at first, until I thought of using the independent counters and actually got the courage to execute the plan (that many triggers is a lot of work, especially when the only mass-editing utility for triggers that you have doesn't work).

Thanks again for your response, I did not expect you to actually make a map!

those are 2 very bad things because I can change them in the map. there is a wait trigger that tells me how long it takes between each load. and the other thing is easily done by a seperate trigger putting in flashly lights and such.

I reduced the time of the wait trigger, and now the "blank square/no unit" problem is even worse... about 50/50 of getting nothing.

Personally, I am an incredible perfectionist, especially when it comes to programming and such, and this is why I would not use your method in a map I published.

I don't know if you are familiar with Visual Basic, but I feel like your method compared to mine is like patching a bug in an application with "On Error Resume Next", instead of actually fixing the bug. I would much rather do the latter.

I do appreciate your ideas. However, I'm not going to modify the map any further -- I've already published the final version of Starcraft Slots, and it's "set in stone", so to speak.

Thanks for your feedback, and an interesting discussion.