Staredit Network

Well, I'm sure all of us here are aware of the new craze involving speeding up maps by using P13/14/whatever units hidden somewhere in the corner.

What most of us aren't aware of are the problems that they present.
They can destabilise network games, and do not work on non-Windows versions of Starcraft.

That last one is vitally important as a substantial number (Although it's probably only 5% or so of users) of people on Battle.net use either the Macintosh or Linux version of Starcraft. If these maps really take off, then a lot of people are going to be excluded from games.

Now I'll take you through exactly what happens when a non-windows user plays a P13+ map:

- The map will download and the host starts the game.
- Briefing runs fine.
- The moment the game starts, a short period of horrendous lag ensues, and the game de-synchronises, dropping the non-compatible player (and probably delaying the game for the others)

So we now know that this new 'thing' causes a problem. What can we do about it?
The obvious thing to do would be to stop making P13+ maps, but I'm not so mean as to ask you to do that. Instead, if you make a map that with these unstable units, please please please make sure that the fact is clearly displayed; preferably in one of the Forces boxes so we don't have to enter the briefing, then find out and then leave - ruining the game for the others.

Not sure where this should go - I'll dump it in assistance.

I think i'll dump it in Concepts

I think i'll just comment that this cannot be helped, and such, maybe it doesn't get effected by certain units after this point?

Yes, I was considering putting it in concepts, but it's about help too.

What do you think about P13, Bolt?

EDIT: Reply to Coko -

Maybe that's something that could be looked into.

Any player13+ units will cause that. The reason is that PCs and MACs store the memory in a dif order, so in the buffer overflow (I wrote a tut somewhere explaining what's that) it reads diferent memory. Is known that when 2 players try to play a map with diferences togheter they disconnect. That moslty happen with mods. So when the SCs reads dif memory they read dif units stats and the units resultant are diferent, that's why it disconnects.

It is unfixeable.

One time I played one of these maps, and after a while it reverted back to normal speed.

Thats a little strange, however if this problem cannot be fixed due to, what appears to be a BUILT-IN problem between the actual OS then, such is life, i never use them, P13+ is just annoying!

Well, thanks for all the help - especially Clokr with his expert technical info.

I guess I just have to hope that most people will also see P13 maps as horrible.

No demand = No supply. In other words, people won't make P13 maps if most people hate them. But then people make bounds when most people hate them...

I don't know who puts P13/P14 in their maps, but I only do if I'm screwing around with StarForge and doing some tests. Not in my real maps.

There have been some serious maps: defences, sports maps and 'novel' maps with P13 units.

None have become particularly popular yet.

P13/P14 aren't even really that great though. It just helps impatient people think that life is moving faster.

May those people will learn to get a better OS (no offense meant).

More info on Moose's research.
You can find it on his signature.

I hate to say it, but most of my research probably isn't even true because there have been new patches since I started. That's why DK found all that stuff and I didn't get much.

This is an useless never-ending research, just weird, but not useful.

Woo! Good job, Clokr. 666th Post. Now all you need is 671 more till 1337.

Yes, the P14 research is gonna take forever. It's confusing too. You should do combinations of things like how P14 affects Player 161 while using Sprite #### in the tileset of Blah! That'd be fun.

Except for the fact that there'd probably be a few quintillion combinations you could do, and so you'd need many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many millions of people doing it all at one time with some program connected onto all hte computers doing this so no1 repeats any, so that by the time you're 0.005% done 2 new patches have come out.

I'm aware of the problem, but most people have the windows version of Starcraft anyway. Just include it in one of the forces for your map IF you include any units 13-256.


BTW for you people that actually have macs, you might want to check out the players for yourself and maybe find some interesting things that the pc version doesn't have.

Anyone played maps where the minimap gets screwed up and shows different things besides the map you are playing?

That has to do with the terrain size of the map.

Ooh, i found something out

P13 2x speeds s up "move location" triggers

Hmmm, then don't use it anymore, use P14 Scarab, simple answer, p13 isn't liked by Starcraft anymore!

I know, i was just saying my small discovery

And into the record books goes HI for finding out this, the most important of finds, thanks to him, newbs and advanced people alike will never use P13 with Move Locations!

Aww, don't hate on the guy. Everybody wants to discover something, but now its like trying to discover a new body of land in today's age.


Unless you're freakin' gilligan, then you have a heads up, spose'