Staredit Network

Hi everyone,

In the map I'm making at the moment, I have one part where I need a unit selector. This is a player vs player map, and so the unit selectors need to either be separate from each other, or they can be joined but the players cannot see or tell what other people are selector. Also, the player should be able to choose the location the units appear when selected.

Currently, here's my options for unit selectors:

• Traditional unit selector, made up of multiple beacons, and you select the right beacon by placing a spidermine on a beacon. The problem is, this one takes a lot of space, and unless there were separate arrays of beacons for each player, you'd be able to tell exactly what the enemy was doing.
• Mind control selector. Again, you'd be able to tell what the enemy was doing unless there was a separate selection area for each player. However, it's relatively easy to make separate selectors for each player with the mind control selector while using just one group of triggers.
• Larva selector. This is not a bad idea, other players will not be able to tell what you selected, but it's a bit difficult to use for the player. I just hope that stacking 50 hives will mean the map will never run out of larva.
• Dropship selector. Just like on of Tuxedo-Templar's defense maps (I can't remember which one). I like this option, but you'd only ever be able to select units when the dropship was over ground, which might be bit of a downside.

I'm leaning towards having the Larva selector with a hero Overlord to choose where you want the units to appear. But, I came here wondering whether you guys had any other options for selectors that I hadn't thought of.

How many units are we talking about, here? If it's 10 or below, I'd use a Gateway/Stargate/Robotics Facility system, where depending on the unit you build it gets removed and your unit pops up. All you'd need to do is provide space for the three buildings and a pylon for each player, and stack the other required buildings in a corner somewhere. That's 3 hotkeys, which isn't such a big deal.

Another idea, use the dropship system and make it unable to move. Use another unit as a targeter, like the Hero Overlord you mentioned above.

Hmmmm... it's more like 15-20 units. I think the stationary dropship idea is best at the moment. The trouble is, the player builds Protoss and Terran buildings in this map already. Dropship it is.

Then go overlord/ people are alwasy talking about Dropship and stuff but they never use shuttle or overlord.

Go with the Overlord/Overlord combo. That'd be pretty cool and consistent. Or maybe use a Corsair as the targeter or something, they move pretty fast, don't they?

Well, I'm going to have to use the Overlord for the selector, and some other hero unit for the placer, since most of the units are already booked in this map.

I've got my dropship selector to load units nicely now, and it detects changes perfectly. Now I just realised that there's no point unloading and reloading the entire Overlord, you just have to reload what was dropped. Now I need to do a logic rewrite... this is fun.

Hi Nozomu!

Does just reloading the one unit you dropped put him in the same slot in the drop ship? Many times i would load them all each time because I could be gareintied that they would be loaded in the same pattern each time.

I also like the idea of a corsair as a targeter with the web and everything. Also how about making a small sqaure with sqaure tiles to represent your map area where your drop ship is then have each spot on the sqaure corrospond with a area in the map.
So if you drop your unit on the lower left of the little sqaure your corsair would be spawned (moved) to the lower left hand part of the map (to await more precise targeting. If you break your map into a 5x5 grid like it it might speed up the targeting process alot and still be pretty easy to trigger and not too much extra work. (do you get what i'm saying?)

why not use a cloaked unit?

even if you have it somewhere else on the map u can put triggers in place to stop ppl useing it.

We should make a list of ideas of user-input selectors and switches. With switches I mean selectors of just ON/OFF, wich can be the same than the other selectors with just 2 options, or other ones, like tanks, hydralisks, burrowing, etc. Also you can make a selector with more options based on a group of ON/OFF selectors (like binary works) but it would be too advanced for bnet.

How's this?

EDIT: Kill the unit you want with the cannon.
You stop enabling the cannon when you don't want to use it and you can fit a lot of units around the cannon. The only problem is that you'll have to make two if you don't want the players to see eachother.
EDIT2: If you dont know, just click on the cannon to enable it.

I never use dropship... I always use shuttle.

Can someone test my idea and tell me if it's teh sux? I'm thinking of incorporating it into a map I'm making.

Death counters?

burrowing units isn't bad. YOu represent each burrowable zerg unit for another unit, hotkey or something, and unborrow them, to create some of them units....

Just the thing is, you need to detect the burrowed state.... so... it might be pointless.

And killing the unit thing, to make thing's easier, you would have one computer player for each human player...

Oh... You know for the beacon thing? Instead of having lots of beacons, you could put lots of units, and move them to 1 beacon or somthing.

on the dirt terrian in the badlands tile set, if you check only "low ground" for the location, when you burrow a zerg unit you can use that location.

Death counters are a way of hiding counters, waits, whatever you may be using them for in your map. All you do is add, set, subtract deaths for units controled by players to use them.

If you notice, there is a condition that looks for deaths and there is an action that lets you change them. Plus you can use deaths for units you can't even kill or can't even place in a map.

What? Clokr_ why did you edit my post there? I know exactly what death counters are... I can't make triggers without them.

its pretty much player brings units to say 1st location create "unit" for current player