SC2Mapster

If it were just for the word dyke this would be silly but that was just the example they gave, so it sounds like there were lots of inappropriate words and some people complained about it. Anyway, while it sucks it's not exactly an secret policy that you can't publish maps with certain words in them, and the fact that you pulled them algorithmically from a dictionary instead of writing them yourself doesn't change that. Intent doesn't really matter in this situation.

Now whether the rules are good ones is another matter entirely and personally I think they're fucking stupid, and I do sympathize with you.

I can only think of two situations where you'd need the player name as a string...

1. To use it as a key to store it in a bank. Note that you CAN store text as a value in a bank, just not as a key. So it's kind of an edge case - might be useful if you wanted to store a player's record versus another player, for example.

2. To interact with the 'Entered Chat String' function, for example if you wanted to perform some action if a player types another player's name in chat.

There could be other use cases but those are the only two that come to mind. It goes without saying that if they added a text to string function there would be literally no reason to have two separate data types, so it's obviously by design that such a function does not exist.

nevermind

@ipikamoo: Go

You need to remove its pathing footprint.

Quote from Colawaffle: Go

- How do you know if the tower will be blocking when it is being placed?

        Unit - Create 1 Ultralisk for player 0 at Creep Path Points[Player][0] using default facing (No Options)
        General - If (Conditions) then do (Actions) else do (Actions)
            If
                (Pathing cost for unit (Last created unit) to point Creep Path Points[Player][1], considering buildings of type Include All Buildings) == -1
            Then
                Variable - Set Return Value = false
            Else
        Unit - Remove (Last created unit) from the game

Repeat x4 for each of the four corners of the platform. I use an ultralisk because it's too large to fit in a 1x1 gap, and I wanted to make sure there's always a 2x2 gap for units to move through so they can pass by each other and avoid traffic jams. (ALL creeps in this map, even the ginormous ones, have radii of 0.375 for this reason.)

Quote:

- Mind sharing your experience working with custom map attributes (e.g. Spawn Order)?

        General - If (Conditions) then do (Actions) else do (Actions)
            If
                (Spawn Order game value) == Random
            Then
                Randomize Spawn Order()

Pretty basic. The "Attribute Game Value" function lets you check the value of per-game attributes, and the "Attribute Player Value" function lets you check the value of per-player attributes (such as the difficulty level, which can be set in the lobby.)

Quote:

- Give the transmute buttons their own page in the commandcard. It is kinda crowded right now.

I would LOVE to do this - and believe me, I'm aware that the command cards are far too busy right now - unfortunately there's a hard cap on the number of sub-menus and I've already reached it. :(

Thanks for the crash reports, they're very helpful. As for the tower range being short, that's by design in order to make where you place a tower a very strategic decision, however higher tier towers have longer ranges, so it's also an incentive to upgrade.

Posted an update that removes cinematic mode from the phase transitions. Hopefully this helps with the crashing issues. Updated version is NA only for now.

Quote from mariehane:
@RileyStarcraft: Go

I'm gonna do that tomorrow..
 Is there anything you want me to show (f.ex. Something you're proud of or used a long time on)

WARNINGS:

I might suck badly
 I'm not doing VoiceOver
----

Really any gameplay at all would be nice, especially if it's from the mid to late game where there's lots of stuff going on and everything looks nice and flashy :) I can't even run SC2 on Ultra so I'm really curious to see how my map looks. This is quite awesome of you, btw.

You're referencing (Last created unit) after calling Wait. I don't know if that's specifically causing your bug, but that's a HUGE no-no as it is likely to lead to race conditions when a unit is created while the trigger is waiting.

The fix is easy enough, before calling wait, save (Last created unit) in a variable then post-wait you can reference that variable.

Thanks for the quick response. I'll try again in a few days then.

I can't get more than 10 fps while frapsing my map at the lowest settings, so if you'd make a gameplay YouTube video on ultra I'd love you forever. My map is "The Sorcerer's Defense (EU)" on the EU realms.

Here's the map on SC2Ranks.com, just to demonstrate that it is indeed in their database:
http://sc2ranks.com/map/18861/the-sorcerer-s-defense

However every attempt to add it to my project page (http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/sorcerers-defense/) fails. I think this might be because there's an apostrophe in the title. Could a mod take a look and see if this can be fixed? Thanks,

Quote from Colawaffle: Go

- Cinematic at the beginning, are those re-textured models of the BNet login scene? It looks magnificent.

Not a custom model, it's a story mode model. Look under "Planet View" in the model list, there's a whole bunch of similar ones.

Quote from Colawaffle: Go

- Custom animated portrait? Technically very impressive, although I prefer ones that is easier to recognize.

If you mean the planet portraits for the essences, those are just additional planet view models. The only custom assets are icons which are just Blizzard icons that I colorized/added numeric overlays to.

Quote from Colawaffle: Go

- Real time path drawing? I know how it is done, but the fact that you came up with it is ingenious.

The approach I use is almost entirely in the data editor. The dots are individual units, I have an invisible unit which has a behavior that periodically spawns the dots. To refresh the pathing I create the invisible unit (actually four at each corner), have it run the maze and remove it when it gets to the next corner.

Quote from Colawaffle: Go

- Tower construction animation? Please share your technique in this. Many TD maps can benefit from this.

Event macros are your friends. I have a couple of event macros shared by every tower and implements the construction animation. To be honest, it's very simple - during construction, I use actor events to tint it and then scale it from 0.1 to 1.0 over 10 seconds (the construction time of every tower.) Most of the visual flair comes from a couple extra models spawned on construction. This would probably be a good thing to do a tutorial about.

Thanks for the feedback too.

Quote from kfrx: Go

@RileyStarcraft: Go

I'm on lowest for everything (1920x1080 resolution) and it has only crashed for me once. It's crashed for my friends multiple times though, their settings are all very different though, a mixture of ultra/high/medium. It usually happens within the first 3 levels as we either die or someone crashes by then. There isn't really a specific time it happens, it happens when we are building towers and when the waves are happening.

Oh man, this is the worst thing possible. It doesn't crash for me, and the reports I have of it crashing for other people are completely idiosyncratic and don't seem linked to any particular audio or visual setting. I basically have no way at all of diagnosing or debugging it. Sorry it doesn't work for you :(

Just an update this is now available in EU. The map name is "The Sorcerer's Defense (EU)"