There was a map in the early days of SC2 that had this feature. It would print the anticipated path of the mobs through your maze with signal-lights on the ground. Like an "ant train".
I am really curious if anybody of you remembers a map in which I could look up this system.
Secondly, I like to add such a feature to my current td project. At best without a dummy unit. Is there some way to access/calculate the required points along this path?
In theory, one might send an invisible unit (side question: what is the correct way to create an invisible dummy unit in sc2?), which is quite fast, through the maze and every .1 seconds a doodad is dropped/created at the invisible runner's position. All these doodads are added to a group and before a new "plotting run" is started, all doodads from that group are removed.
Is there a quicker/easier/better way to accomplish this?
The first map I noticed with a similar feature was RileyStarcraft's Sorcerer's Defense, it used an invisible dummy unit at a very high speed, which placed red dots on the floor. However, he allowed mazing only, if you leave room for 2 squares in your maze, possibly because of that dummy unit. In my tests, narrowing the maze caused the pathfinding for the dummy to bug out at higher speeds, so it didn't find a way anymore but got stuck in some corner.
I made an example map for this a while ago, it uses a slower dummy unit; in fact, this is about the highest possible speed not causing the dummy to freak out. The dummy spawns arrow actors, handled in data, which persist on the floor, until the dummy dies. Triggers are only used to create the dummy and order it to run to the next point.
If you start the map, press space to show the path. It was designed to show the pathes for all waypoints individually and in alternating colors, to avoid confusion; as you can see, the chosen waypoint system allows for some major backtrack abusing, causing all units to run through the entire maze multiple times. If you just print the entire path for such a maze, it would result in major cluttering and confusion.
Note, that this was made for demonstration purposes only, the code is not in a readable format or anything.
Theoretically you should be able to generate your own pathing algorithm through triggers but it would be much more difficult than using a dummy unit, which already makes use of SC2's built-in pathing system. Unless you're really good at coming up with that sort of thing there is no quicker/better/easier solution.
The thing that OneTwo (the one who made the TD you're refering to) did was to have an invisible unit run the map, and then create these lights every X seconds at its current position. Give the lights a timed life behavior or use triggers to drestroy them afterwards.
The thing that OneTwo (the one who made the TD you're refering to) did was to have an invisible unit run the map, and then create these lights every X seconds at its current position. Give the lights a timed life behavior or use triggers to drestroy them afterwards.
That's exactly my problem as of right now.
I implemented a system with an invisible runner and my maze system allows for very narrow chokes and sharp turns so I couldn't make the runner very fast. I am planting down "Landing Lights" Actors to plot the way which disappear after some seconds (so you see a worm like thing crawling through your maze).
However, I don't know enough about actors to do the following to things: hide all actors until the path is done and then show all at once. Afterwards destroy all actors together (so you actually see the whole done plotted way at once and not a worm like thing / building up).
@kueken: how did you change the color of the arrows? how do you command an actor to use a specific variant of the model (like with landing lights)
So: How do I hide the actors until everything is placed and how do I destroy/show them all at once (I couldn't find a trigger to do such a thing. Should I plant some units instead?)
I don't think you can do it with just data, but there's a couple of workarounds you could probably do with triggers, such as make the marker units cloaked and belong to an enemy color, then change them to an allied color once the dummy unit completes his route.
@kueken: how did you change the color of the arrows?
I changed the team color of the runner. The way I realized it, the arrows are actually attached to the runner and inherit its team color, so changing the runners color affects the arrow as well; also the arrows die as soon as I remove the runner (I added an additional 10 seconds delay, though).
Quote:
how do you command an actor to use a specific variant of the model (like with landing lights)
You can use the ModelSwap actor message to specify a specific variant.
Quote:
So: How do I hide the actors until everything is placed and how do I destroy/show them all at once (I couldn't find a trigger to do such a thing.
You can send all kinds of actor messages to actors via trigger, for example Hide or Set Opacity. If you use my method, you could also do the same from within the events.
I changed the team color of the runner. The way I realized it, the arrows are actually attached to the runner and inherit its team color, so changing the runners color affects the arrow as well; also the arrows die as soon as I remove the runner (I added an additional 10 seconds delay, though). Quote:
how do you command an actor to use a specific variant of the model (like with landing lights)
You can use the ModelSwap actor message to specify a specific variant. Quote:
So: How do I hide the actors until everything is placed and how do I destroy/show them all at once (I couldn't find a trigger to do such a thing.
You can send all kinds of actor messages to actors via trigger, for example Hide or Set Opacity. If you use my method, you could also do the same from within the events. Quote:
Should I plant some units instead?)
I wouldn't recommend it.
All set and done. I found out parts of it myself while looking through your example map. I am fairly new to actors and events (I am more like a trigger-guy.)
Thank you again for your example map. I was able to use your actors to modify my example to make it much better looking and waaaay more efficent :)
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Hi everyone,
There was a map in the early days of SC2 that had this feature. It would print the anticipated path of the mobs through your maze with signal-lights on the ground. Like an "ant train".
I am really curious if anybody of you remembers a map in which I could look up this system.
Secondly, I like to add such a feature to my current td project. At best without a dummy unit. Is there some way to access/calculate the required points along this path?
In theory, one might send an invisible unit (side question: what is the correct way to create an invisible dummy unit in sc2?), which is quite fast, through the maze and every .1 seconds a doodad is dropped/created at the invisible runner's position. All these doodads are added to a group and before a new "plotting run" is started, all doodads from that group are removed.
Is there a quicker/easier/better way to accomplish this?
best regards,
The first map I noticed with a similar feature was RileyStarcraft's Sorcerer's Defense, it used an invisible dummy unit at a very high speed, which placed red dots on the floor. However, he allowed mazing only, if you leave room for 2 squares in your maze, possibly because of that dummy unit. In my tests, narrowing the maze caused the pathfinding for the dummy to bug out at higher speeds, so it didn't find a way anymore but got stuck in some corner.
I made an example map for this a while ago, it uses a slower dummy unit; in fact, this is about the highest possible speed not causing the dummy to freak out. The dummy spawns arrow actors, handled in data, which persist on the floor, until the dummy dies. Triggers are only used to create the dummy and order it to run to the next point.
If you start the map, press space to show the path. It was designed to show the pathes for all waypoints individually and in alternating colors, to avoid confusion; as you can see, the chosen waypoint system allows for some major backtrack abusing, causing all units to run through the entire maze multiple times. If you just print the entire path for such a maze, it would result in major cluttering and confusion.
Note, that this was made for demonstration purposes only, the code is not in a readable format or anything.
Theoretically you should be able to generate your own pathing algorithm through triggers but it would be much more difficult than using a dummy unit, which already makes use of SC2's built-in pathing system. Unless you're really good at coming up with that sort of thing there is no quicker/better/easier solution.
The thing that OneTwo (the one who made the TD you're refering to) did was to have an invisible unit run the map, and then create these lights every X seconds at its current position. Give the lights a timed life behavior or use triggers to drestroy them afterwards.
That's exactly my problem as of right now.
I implemented a system with an invisible runner and my maze system allows for very narrow chokes and sharp turns so I couldn't make the runner very fast. I am planting down "Landing Lights" Actors to plot the way which disappear after some seconds (so you see a worm like thing crawling through your maze).
However, I don't know enough about actors to do the following to things: hide all actors until the path is done and then show all at once. Afterwards destroy all actors together (so you actually see the whole done plotted way at once and not a worm like thing / building up).
@kueken: how did you change the color of the arrows? how do you command an actor to use a specific variant of the model (like with landing lights)
So: How do I hide the actors until everything is placed and how do I destroy/show them all at once (I couldn't find a trigger to do such a thing. Should I plant some units instead?)
I don't think you can do it with just data, but there's a couple of workarounds you could probably do with triggers, such as make the marker units cloaked and belong to an enemy color, then change them to an allied color once the dummy unit completes his route.
I changed the team color of the runner. The way I realized it, the arrows are actually attached to the runner and inherit its team color, so changing the runners color affects the arrow as well; also the arrows die as soon as I remove the runner (I added an additional 10 seconds delay, though).
You can use the ModelSwap actor message to specify a specific variant.
You can send all kinds of actor messages to actors via trigger, for example Hide or Set Opacity. If you use my method, you could also do the same from within the events.
I wouldn't recommend it.
All set and done. I found out parts of it myself while looking through your example map. I am fairly new to actors and events (I am more like a trigger-guy.)
Thank you again for your example map. I was able to use your actors to modify my example to make it much better looking and waaaay more efficent :)