Staredit Network

Excellent, a mod could totally kick ass, I didn't know you could change the tile with them! That would seriously, seriously, seriously kick total and complete ass. Omg if we could make a mod, that would be awesome. I'll send you all the stuff I have tonight, and definitely ask clan MM for assistance if you can! A lot of people are already getting excited about this project, which is a good thing!

Quick question toast, if we did change the sprites of buildings will they still do things like for instance the cloaked factory, barracks, and eng bay trick? Can we make shadows of these types of buildings different?

Also, MP! thanks for joining the project! You are definitely in, I will give you a msg on bnet when I find you.

And for kirbycode, everytime I go on west I /whereis your name, but your never on! Sorry I haven't been able to contact you yet.

I'm pretty talented in terrain, and I know a good deal on the workings of triggers, althought I have never played Zelda, and my triggering is typically full of mistakes. If you give me screenshots, I can recreate them, or give the style of them to an area. Is this a recreation of the older games? I'm pretty sure that old games would use single tiles for "rocks" "dirt" "grass", etc. In which case, I've made a small brush for jungle which is function for a dirt, grass, sand, water, and tiled floor. You can have it, it's for a map I never started. If it's not on Jungle, I can make more pretty easily. If you mod the graphics only, I'm pretty sure they'll be cloakable. However, if you don't change the shadow sprite as well, you can still get the same shadow.

I re pm'ed you lol.

If I understand you correctly, your referring to the trick of using the shadows for darkness? If you are, we could make a unit that specifically uses a sprite for a shadow, if my knowledge serves me correctly.

Exactly! Hey, btw did you get my email?

Spiral, I can never find you on either. Where do you live anyways? I'm in California. When I look at when we post you keep posting in AM, while i'm posting in PM.

No no no You're thinking of THIS:
________
|____|___|
|___x|O__|
|____|___|

You're thinking that Player X is going from one "Grid" area into another "Grid" area, to spot O. That's easy for shift screen. I'm not talking about that

This is what I'm talking about:
|_______|___|______|
|___P___| -> |____P_| The -> means time has passed by. He is still is in the same grid.

Notice where Player P is relative to the Grid area he is in. He's right next to the edge! Now, in Link to the Past, when you are close to the end of the "grid" area you are in, your screen stops going that direction, say for example, when you hit the southern border of the area your screen stops going south even though you're still going down.

No problem you say? "We'll just put a sparse amount of zerglings on each border, so when the location hits the lings, the location may still constantly center on link, but we'll put a trigger so that it won't center your playing screen. See? Problem solved!" If any of you are thinking that, then you're smart, but that still doesn't work.

This is why it will not work. So you're on the southern edge like Player P right? Ok, now since your location constantly centers on you but has lings because of the southern border, it won't center your screen right? Ok, now tell your guy to move to the southeastern corner or the southwestern corner. Guess what happens! You will run off of the screen! Why? Because even though you're runnning west or east the location still has lings in it!
With that method, whenever you get close to the edge, you would have to charge back to the middle to still have the screen center on you.

So as I was saying, How can we solve this?
Actually, I thought of an idea that may work, but I want your answers first

Again your stressing waaaaaaaaaaay too much, I can make the triggers for that it won't be hard .



=X California...

I've begun working on the mod, here are some teaser shots!





Showing some terrain and some of the link sprite....
This map is gonna own...

So who all do we have working for now?
We need to get together and start discussing the actual map, story, plot, etc..

I'd also like to know what kind of modded units we might be interested in using, (treasure chests, plants, bad guys, etc...) since it is gonna be easy enough to add most of these things in. I'm also looking at the possibility of having real working doors(opening and closing) if I can figure out how to mod the in game doors. And, maybe some info on getting more terrain squares.

Ugh you guys lost me at the grid systems. A system i never enjoyed to part-take in experimenting with.

However, i will be willing to assist you in terrain, storyline, triggering, etc. Excluding anything involving the grid system you will use.

-just realized-

Erm. we're not going to do preplaced units are we? in the zelda games, well some of them, theyve got "dynamic unit timing" Like you kill them, and then once you go out of that screen area and come back, they're back tehre. Also, as the game progresses, the units change to become harder.

I've got a basic concept using switches but for the first idea, it's going to be harder, because of hte different areas (ie one is just annoying octo's and hte other is like a ugly monster type thing.)

If your making a mod couldnt you just mod the text to have a box around it instead of using units to make a box

I dont know much about programming so maybe it wouldnt work, but its just a suggestion

Wow! This is kicking more ass then I thought! Dude, supertoast you are my hero. I almost shat myself after seeing those screens. Anyway, your right we do need to work on the actual construction of the game, so here is the basic 'tree' for now if you may. You'll be happy to know I led a team of about 20 game designers for an actual rpg I was making, but due to its complexity, it never got made. Btw, it wasn't in Sc. Now I work on the project as a side task. What was the problem? Well when you have more people, unless you have supervisors to constantly check up on what those people have done, nothing ever gets done. You cannot believe how happy I was when I saw you actually started working on a mod Supertoast! Anyway, enough rambling, I'll get to current sign ups in a second. Here is the game design 'stages' we will need to work on.

Mod
- Graphics
- Sound?

StoryLine
- Character Definitions
- Quests
- Message Boxes

Enemies
- Boss Battles
- Enemy AI

Equipment
- Items
- Adv. Equipment

Link
- Abilities
- Techniques
- Battle Tact.
- Movement

Basic Layouts
- Layout
- Map Layout
- Dungeon Layout

Programming
- Triggering

That is all I could think of. I was in a rush so it might not all be there, feel free to 'add' a category that I missed. Btw, the current team members are:

Elite Team Members:
☼ SuperToasted
☼ My.Kirbycode774

Team Members:
- T-Virus
- RandomJo
-Mp)Sniper

Because they were the first ones to join, if enough people join they will be supervisors of the team. Why? Well, they show enthusiasm, and there willing to work. Ne'ways, if you still want in theoretical, just show me what you can trigger, I really don't think we need more terrain people. Either that, or sign up for one of the categories above.

RandomJo do you want in or not, I can't tell lol. You seem to be posting ideas, but do you want me to add you to the roster?

I will be gone until Thursday! Sorry! I promise we can get this up and going when I get back. I expect that mIRC will be used so we can all chat, unless you want to use a multi convo msn thing or w/e...

Hey, except in special cases, we should assign one or two people to be the ones who actually places the ideas in the triggers. With over 20 people, we don't need to be stalled 3 weeks because someone forgot to pass the map before going to Hawaii or were just lazy.

Even if you don't decide to do that, NEVER "hand" the map to me unless you give me the deadline to place the triggers in the map that very day. I already had an incident like that with a friend once; that's why "The Puzzler" is not known. Anyways, on to your list.

Mod: Frankly, I dislike the use of mods on B.net. One it's illegal, and two Blizzard can legally claim ownership of this map if it lives up to its hype. Who seriously wants to let Blizzard claim this work as theirs? Of course, since this is only four players and probably will take too long to dl, it would be acceptable in LAN.
Also, should there be a non-mod version for the non-modders on B.net?

Storyline: Are the links based upon "Four sword" scenario, or are they different links from different places that have banded together?

Enemies, Enemy AI: Enemy AI shouldn't be that hard if we have multiple locations on each enemy. One problem is that, in the video game, the monsters can overlap each other (aka same grid square). This isn't going to be true in our map right? (enemies could get stuck on each other or stop moving)

Enemies, Bosses: Now that I think about Bosses, I think we should skip on the enemy AI until we can figure out how Link will move.

Equipment: Do you want unique equipment? I mean; there's obviously more than enough equipment from past Zeldas to make about six SC maps with them!

Link, Abilities/Techniques/BattleTact: All of these are based upon how Link can move.

Link, Movement: In some Zelda games Link cannot move diagonally. Can he move diagonally in this? Will there be "pre-set" commands that automatically moves Link in a specific set of steps? Can the players create their own "multi-step" commands?

Basic Layout: Don't even ask me. I'm still slightly shocked from the change in grid size.

Programming: As I said earlier,

You could say we need a "professional" programmer to add in our ideas and triggers.

Oh and I'm positive that RandomJo wants in. Before you told me your times, RandomJo told his and we've been talking a bit about the map.

Boo! You're leaving us!

I have a few minutes to post while at a friends house!! Better make it worth my while... Okay, straight to the Q's.



I am lost with what you mean, like trigger creators, or people who create unique ideas using triggers? I might already have another person who can join, and is good, if not better then me with sc trigs. I do agree though, this area needs the most back up.



Yes, most likely there will be a non modded version for sc players, however it will only be about 50% as good as the real thing! The mod version is going to pwn all. Forget about bnet!



Well, I'm not even too sure myself if the story will be based around link. Of course everything is zelda graphics, and zelda style, (because that totally pwns 32 x 32), but who knows, if we wanted too we could totally recreate links character design.



Actually it is! I thought a long time about this, and one of the easiest solutions was to simply make all enemies air units. Because of the fact that we can delete their shadow, and do other cool stuff with them, not only could we customize different animation for the units, but they could also overlap.



Well of course we wouldn't use ALL of the zelda equipment. We want some unique gear though. You know?



I got that down, leave the programming of the grid and crap to me. I should have a beta availiable soon.



Don't worry all of links movement will be free movement. If we had him attach to a grid, that would be untrue to the original game. Because this is true, you can move him in any direction that you please.



Yeah, the more ideas we have flowing around the better. I definitely agree.

Also, RandomJo, what positions do you want? I can sign you up!

I have to agree with Spiral on the b.net thing. Let's face it, most people on b.net won't give one cent to a map like this. Even without a mod, it can be a 1mb map file and up, so chances of spreading it are zero to none. This map will be more or less for the community and for anyone who comes here for it. I also understand the ideas of making a non-mod version, and if we are going to do that, we must decide now. With a mod we can add so many things to the game that can't be done in regular starcraft, for one thing it is gonna be EXTREMLY easy to do an advanced virtual hp system just by forcing attacks to create disruption webs and dark swarms, but in regular starcraft this feature can not work. So we must decide now if we actually want to make two versions, and if we do want two, how much mod do we want to use. Another option would be to make two almost entirely different coded/triggered maps for each version. That would take the most work, but would get the most playability.

As of right now, I'm working on modding over terrain, so that is one thing that we will have to deal with if we make a mod and a non-mod version. Terrain layout would be a big thing to deal with, because with the moded terrain we are going to have a lot more flexibility in making terrain for a zeld type landscape. But, I am having trouble using an editor to show the correct terrain. As far as I've found, the editor's seem to not allow you to use custom terrain, I've even tried some things with the beta scmdraft, but it wasn't working. So anyone with some help on this would be much appreciated.

As a BTW... I have more or less finished the link sprite and most of the iscripting on it. I'm still going to be changing some sounds and maybe some button layouts, (possibility of having built in buttons to do spells/special attacks...). We still need to figure out something for the unit portrait, the wireframe, and the armor/attack/sheild pictures. I pretty much suck at any modeling so I can't come up with a wireframe or a unit portriat, but I should be able to come up with some icons for armor/attack/shield. Any help in the modeling side of the graphics, (wireframes, .smk unit portraits, editing other grps, etc...) would be greatly appreciated. I'll look and see if anyone I can find can help with these things.

As a last point, do we want to make any sort of seperate website/fourms for this project?

Ok luckily noone read that post by me. Anywways, I'll do stuff with the normal triggers and terrain. I'm quite good at changing concepts and ideas to triggers. However, don't just ask me to copy and paste the original trigger liek 10000 times while changing 1 thing on it eahc time. THAT just annnoys the plain hell outta me.( thats why it's gunna take so long to do my null defense map...)

hehe thanks to killer for the terrain =P

I'm thinkign we use a virtual hp system for this... I mean, burrow a zerg unit and make that the hp unit. Also, we can make "link" regenerate hp that way too.
It's just a modded version fo teh deep blue game thingy~ but it should wokr pretty well.

Btws, kirby I like your new idea of a grid system a lot more. It works so much freaking nicer! however, W'ell still need locations centered on link. But I get that idea of havign a ling in teh middle of the map and tat trigger would be really nice.

You don't need 2 comps for the virtual hp. Store all the lings in a remote area of the map, alittle 2x2 square and only have 1 at the location of the link or zelda or w.e... Whenever that one dies and there's a ling in the remote area, you just move 1 to the location of the hero. until he's out of remote lings.

But it's funner when you lose all your lives to splash.

That's not how I'm thinking. What we can do is have every attack either by a link or by an enemy create either a dark swarm or a disruption web. So all link's attacks would make disruption webs which could then be used to detect boss hits. Regular baddies would be simply killed by sword swipes. Then the bad guy's attacks would spawn dark swarms. So, it's basically an advanced gunner type system. Link's hp could be kept track of using Vespene in the upper right corner. So if he has 1 heart, he has 1 vespene, 2 hearts, 2 vespene, etc... That way the player can see how many hits he has left, and it might also be possible to change the image of the vespene chunk in the corner to that of an actual link heart... We can also then use the minerals for rubbies, and in effect make a virtual HUD to display link's data. Each player would then have their own screen with their own health as well.

Wow, I didn't think I would actually have time to respond, but here I am again lol. I guess I kind of lied. However, it is a good thing I was able to post again... right? Anyway, straight to the Q and A like before. Brainstorm time!!!!!



So if we must decide... I again say screw bnet, lets just make the modded version. When we finish that we can then decide on whether or not we want to make a non modded version. Eh? It makes a lot more sense, because as SuperToast was pointing out, at the bnet comment I made before, the only people who will benefit from this project is the people at SEN, and other map developers.



I'm lost, didn't you use custom terrain in the screenshots? Also, I definitely agree that terrain layout will be one of the biggest areas of focus we will need wto work with. This project isn't going to be anything close to 'small.'



I can get us graphics for armor, attack, and shields. Quick question though, I had an interesting idea, and I didn't know if it was possible. Could you change those graphics during the actual game? If not, we can do a lot more with it. I will find you some graphics, and fish out ideas as we go a long. Also, don't worry about the wireframe, I can make one in PS with zelda pics. What size do you need these, and what format do you need the pics? I know the wireframe changes, so I don't know exactly what kind of image they use for that. It seems like it would be a 2 color thing with black and white, where sc code simply changes the color of the white to green and other health crap, but tell me, and I can do it. Also, how do you make .smk unit portraits. I can make small animated versions in flash, but I need to know how to transfer it to a .smk. Your the one who knows about all the modding stuff, but keep in mind I can help with anything else, because my multimedia knowledge is pretty vast, in terms of programs.



Coding in SC is not fun, luckily SCMD2 made their new trigger editor plug in program to make all coding like that, completed in 10 minutes or less. Don't use SCXE when you have many triggers, because it is much easier do to with SCMD2.



I have also thought a bit about this, and I have a few ideas. Since all the attacks will be programmed attacks, and so on, we don't even need to worry about making it so the units have vitural hp. They will have hp, but it will all be recoreded with... Variables! Yes, I know what fun, this will add a lot more expansion though, and make many things a lot easier. Of course we are still going to need to use the idea that SuperToast suggested with the Dist. Web, and swarm, but they are going to be used in a different way. How? Well we will use them as ST described, but there going to detect where attacks were made. The area that the attack effects will be made with these, as well as many other units. Trust me, you may be confused right now, but I have it all planned out. Read this a few times again, if needed I can re explain it. To move on, we will also need to make it so the player knows he hit the enemy. Now, when I thought about this, I was like, 'In all the old zelda games, the enemy would typically move backward, and then flash to signal that you hit him' Well, lucky for us this isn't too hard to mimic. We could first make it so the computer changes to a computer that is of 'red' or white color. Hell, since there are only four players at a time, (we could add a spectator) then we could make it so the computer switches from white to red really quickly, then a small explosion could appear where he is, and then he could be pushed back. I have been messing with this idea a lot, and I am not sure how to work with it. It should work, and look pretty cool, tell me what you think. Eh?



I got the idea, but you need to undestand that none of the units are using their normal attacks or anything like that. You do know that right?



Bingo, (lights go off) and the prize goes to... (drumroll) ...SuperToast!



Yes, that would be very efficient. Hey wanna know of an even crazier idea though. This idea is wicked crazy, and could possibly lag sc, even though I have never seen sc lag before, people have said it somtimes does.. (laughs at the idea of making the map have a processor requirement) ... anyway back to the idea:
In the map, we will always know where link is, because link will be in the area of the screen. What does this mean? Well, it means, if we do this right, maybe a heart system could be allocated at the top of the screen. I know what your thinking, 'that isn't possible with sc. However, I beg to differ, wouldn't it be possible if we always know where link is? Your first repsonse is probably, "how do you figure?" well, here is what I base my reasoning upon. Because we always know where the screen is, we can make a location that always centers where the center of the screen is located, we can do this with the grid, and complex triggers. From there, we make a north, north east, north west, west , east , etc. 8 location prism around it. From there, we can make these locations move to the top left area of the screen using movement with centering and unit grid creation. The locations will then find themselves at the corner of the screen. Now, the only problem with this is, if the triggers aren't perfectly coded, this system could very well glitch out. However, if the triggers are made smoothly, this system could work very smoothly. I know this idea needs to be explained more, due to the fact that it has never been done, but when you look at it from this angle, it really is quite simple. The triggers read so fast, that you will never even know any of this happened every .0001 ms while playing the game. Interesting eh? Im going to make a demo version of this idea when I get back, so I can show you what I mean. I know I have lost all of you guys with this idea.



If I can get my idea to work, I say we use the minerals for rupees, and the gas for a universal item trigger. That way if we have bomb chus, bombs, arrows, or anything else, we can make it so it reads how many you have with that. We can use a unique picture to show its a universal item reader. With triggers we can make the variables change depending on what weapons you have equiped.



Virtual Hud? You lost me, what do you mean?



I can start on a website when I get back, I will need a server though, I am Not using freewebs, so if anyone has some good free web hosters tell me. I know a few, but I love to add to the list. I can also make a personal forum for this, so that can all work out. However, I had an interesting idea.... It is kind of funny how almost no one on SEN knows this project is going on right under their very noses, so I say we ask if we can get our own forum area on this site. If it is not allowed, and SEN administrators disagree with the idea, then I can make a forum, and a small grudge against SEN .


That is all, I can't wait to get back to my house so I can start working on all these ideas. I'll get back to you guys as soon as I can. I am really surprised I had a chance to post at all today.

ooo well, This thing is gunna progress quite quickly. Ill be helping with the normal non modded version if that's alright, cus i really really suck at modding


Oh I don't use SCXE i stick to scmd2 and SF<mostly SF. I really just don't like scmd2 for some reason I have no idea whatsover. Maybe it's just cus i can copy an paste terrain in sf...

Btw, Why don't the non-modders start on the unmodded version while you guys start on modded one? (or from teh kickass screenies, keep working on em)

All right, about editing the terrain.

In starcraft their are five files for each tileset that determine what the terrain is. A .cv5 file, a .vr4 file, a .vx4 file, a .vf4 file, and a .wpe file. So the files for the Jungle tileset are:
jungle.cv5, jungle.vr4, jungle.vx4, jungle.vf4, and jungle.wpe.
Each file has it's own specific purpose, but I'm not entirely sure which each one is. As far as I know, the .cv5 file is the main file that contains pointers for each terrain tile's data in the other files. The .vr4 file contains the actual images for each tile. The .vx4/.vf4/.wpe file contains the data for each square (height, buildability, etc...). Their is then one other file that is related to the terrain and that is a dodad file, which is a ddata.bin file. To edit a tileset you need to change parts of all five of the main files. Now, when you have an editor, it is loading these tileset from somewere. It does not have them preloaded, and in the case of the original staredit, it would be in the staredit.mpq file in your starcraft folder. Were I am having my problem is making it so that the editors use my custom tilesets instead of the built in ones.

I hope that helps you to understand the problem.


You don't need to be good at modding. Hopefully in the end, this mod will be compatiable with one of the editors so you would actually be able to terrain and place units as the mod will have them. I'm hoping the new scmdraft2 that is currently in the beta will have full support of the custom .mpq file as is being worked on in the beta.


Finally: Spiral-Once we get some of the basics down, we'll need to do some talking about unit graphics and pictures that we want. I have a few ideas I'd like to share with you about various modded units and other things. Also, I was wondering if you had any more images directly from the same zelda game as the ones you already sent me. I'd especially like some more terrain samples from there to add. If you don't have any, could you at least tell me which zelda game those were form so that I can look for some myself?

Hmm... it is a shame scmd2 does not yet support it. Do we have any other options then waiting for the updated version of scmd2 to come out? That would be a real shame if it was our only possibility.



Zelda graphics are easy to find, rip, and find ripped, no worry, just tell me what is needed and I can get it. The link was taken from four swords, and the other graphics are from a link to the past.

Spiral im still in this thing remember, it's just that i haven't been on sc lately. You can reach me at my bot though ClanMp

What I mean is, if we "share" the map with each other so each person can tinker on it, one person might get lazy and forget to work on the map! We might have to wait weeks to them to add their idea!

Therefore, I was suggesting we have a one or two people who are told the vague ideas and specific triggers to put in. That way, those with this "job" can put the triggers in quickly so we don't waste time!



Spiral, imagine this: I am Red Link, You are Blue Link. You are hiding at the very bottom right of the this specific map grid because I "accidentally" hit you with a couple bombs. So now, you have 2 hearts left (out of 5).

I am hack n slashing away at all the monsters, right? Well, since you are at the bottom right, you can see your hearts at the top left of your specific screen. What about me? I am near you, so I see two heart measures; one at the top left, and one at the bottom right? WHY?!?!?!

When trying to make it specifically for your Link, you forgot one thing; all the other links will see it on their screen too! Just like in the normal game of SC, where if positioned correctly, you can have units under the mineral and gas pictures, the other links could stand under your heart containers and see it.

Sorta kills your thoughts, huh?


RAWR!!!
*charges at SpiralEdge to strangle him. Gets shot in the back with silver arrows from SuperToast.