I think you're confusing a bunch of stuff. A comparatively small number of effective strategies is actually the sign of a highly developed strategy game. Games that aren't very competitive often have huge multitudes of options because no one actually knows how to play. One opening is as good as another because no one knows how to punish "bad" openings, or even what a bad opening is.
If you play in Bronze league, there are 10 million different openings. You'll see more strategies than you could ever imagine, from mass Battlecruiser to "never build SCV's ever" to "oh god how do I play this game" to standard openings.
This is because deep strategy isn't about "I'm going to build marines this game instead of marauders". That's facile. Someone whose never played the game before can come up with that strategy. Strategy in an RTS is about decision-making in time, and execution of that strategy, which you've reduced to "pressing buttons faster". Beyond a certain point, it's not about pressing buttons faster, it's about having the foreknowledge and experience to know where to allocate your limited time and brainpower.
If you don't like this, there's a whole genre of games that avoid this. They're called turn-based strategy games. Time, however, is a fundamental part of Real Time Strategy games. Even lesser games like Dawn of War 2 are fundamentally about multitasking, they're just so easy and shallow that you have to make very few trade-offs or decisions regarding it.
I have a map set in space and I'm trying to get some neutral planet units to spin idly, like the mothership. I tried using the mothership's method (turret-based), but the problem is that there are no attachment points in the planet object I'm using, so as far as I know, I can't actually have the planet spin. Does anyone have any suggestions for ways to make my idle planet objects slowly rotate?
Sorry it took so long, I actually forgot I posted here until just now, but I'm pretty sure I know whats wrong.
First: You need to give the Factory the Build In Progress ability, otherwise it doesn't build. Buildings have their own ability (so it can be canceled) for construction. If they don't, it gives an error and just builds instantly as you saw.
Second: You'll notice the factory is weirdly too large in the placement model, but becomes the correct size when you place it. This is because you have the actor set to scale down, but not the model. See you can change the scale in either place, but when you use a model as a placement model, it actually just uses the model scaling. To fix this, create a unique Factory duplicate model, change the model scale to be shrunk down as you want, change the actor scale to 1.0, and you should be good to go with that. In other words, use the Model scale field instead of the Actor scale field when possible.
Third: For the Power Generator having a built Power Generator sitting in the middle of the construction animation, this is a problem where I don't know an elegant solution. It uses the field Art - Model (Build), but the problem is that the Power Generator has no build animations. One solution to this is to use a placeholder model in that field instead. For example, you could change the field to Terran Tarmac; I think that might work visually.
I've attached a modified version of the map which fixes the first and the third issue to use as reference if you'd like. If you have any other issues I'd be happy to help, I'll try to keep up on the thread.
The main issue (I think) is that if your building model doesn't have a construction animation, it will just default to the standard animation, which unfortunately means you have a giant building just sitting there. I don't know of a way around this, but I'm sure there is one. Unfortunately, specifying nothing in the construction model field just gives an error and a placeholder sphere model.
BasharTeg's suggestion _was_ essentially that you hit the team color button next to the minimap though. You aren't giving an indication that you understand that that's actually a mode, it makes all allies colored yellow, enemies colored red, your own units colored green, and all others colored white, it's not a bug or strange behavior. It sounds like all you did was disable the ability to have that button take effect.
In other words, there was no change, except you hit the button somewhere between now and then.
I had no idea there was a way to set it manually - I personally just set the Z-offset of the selection circle at like, -10, so that it's buried in the ground and effectively invisible.
I've actually completed a Dawn of War style squad system for a map I'm working on, so I have a piece of the puzzle. I think your map concept sounds pretty cool, there aren't very many original PvP strategy game concepts on bnet right now, or it doesn't feel that way to me.
I don't think you'd find a data-only solution that would be complete and good. I've looked at some ways to accomplish this sort of thing with data and it seems to me that organizing groups of units like this just seems saner when done with triggers. Everything you've mentioned sounds really straightforward to do with triggers. You could use data if you just want your units to travel in a group, I imagine there'd be a way to have the units issue an order at their commander to follow him, but you can run into some outside cases where units get stuck on one another and things like that that would probably be easier to handle with triggers, possibly a combination.
The way I'd do it with a trigger-based core, based on my experiences creating a squad-command system: you want to create a very large unit group array. Have a trigger give every commander-type unit a Custom Value, which for internal purposes will be the commander's unit group's ID number. When a unit falls under the leadership of a commander, get the commander's custom value, and place it in the appropriate address in the unit group array, and also give those units the custom value as well just so you have an easy way to figure that out.
Once you have the units in groups, you need a way to make them cohere as a unit. The major issue I can think of off the top of my head is - how large are these units? Having the units maintain a visually pleasing coherency is a different task depending on if they're units of 4-6 or 40-60. The most straightforward way is to just have the units follow the commander - literally issue a follow order. Give them a behavior to make them uncommandable and all that. This could be a real clusterf@#$ though with lots of units that travel at different speeds, or with too many units. The way I do my squads is when a unit receives orders, I use a slightly weird process to copy-paste the command units orders to the followers; you could do something similar with move orders. It's the sort of thing you just have to mess with until you get good results.
Everything else is just a matter of applying and removing behaviors.
I think generally its a good idea even if you use data in this way to keep the units in unit groups and keep track of them that way as a back up system. You could do something, for example, like put a "Rally Unit" button, and then when that ability is activated, call a trigger that rubber bands all the units to their commander. Another good thing to do would be to have a trigger that, when a battle starts, makes sure all the appropriate units are present and accounted for.
I think your biggest challenge is going to be aesthetic, and making these theoretical ideas actually play well in practice, the mechanics are pretty straightforward, however you do it.
Well if you just want to create multiple levels for a tower with minor differences, you really don't even need to create entirely new units. Depending on what you want to do, I think you could easily accomplish the same just applying behaviors and such.
Is it possible, using triggers or trigger-applied data effects, to alter a unit's height or vision height? I don't mean the height of the model, I mean the game mechanic of relative height, so that the unit can or can't see over cliffs.
0
I think you're confusing a bunch of stuff. A comparatively small number of effective strategies is actually the sign of a highly developed strategy game. Games that aren't very competitive often have huge multitudes of options because no one actually knows how to play. One opening is as good as another because no one knows how to punish "bad" openings, or even what a bad opening is.
If you play in Bronze league, there are 10 million different openings. You'll see more strategies than you could ever imagine, from mass Battlecruiser to "never build SCV's ever" to "oh god how do I play this game" to standard openings.
This is because deep strategy isn't about "I'm going to build marines this game instead of marauders". That's facile. Someone whose never played the game before can come up with that strategy. Strategy in an RTS is about decision-making in time, and execution of that strategy, which you've reduced to "pressing buttons faster". Beyond a certain point, it's not about pressing buttons faster, it's about having the foreknowledge and experience to know where to allocate your limited time and brainpower.
If you don't like this, there's a whole genre of games that avoid this. They're called turn-based strategy games. Time, however, is a fundamental part of Real Time Strategy games. Even lesser games like Dawn of War 2 are fundamentally about multitasking, they're just so easy and shallow that you have to make very few trade-offs or decisions regarding it.
0
Sounds cool, I'll try it out.
0
I have a map set in space and I'm trying to get some neutral planet units to spin idly, like the mothership. I tried using the mothership's method (turret-based), but the problem is that there are no attachment points in the planet object I'm using, so as far as I know, I can't actually have the planet spin. Does anyone have any suggestions for ways to make my idle planet objects slowly rotate?
0
Sorry it took so long, I actually forgot I posted here until just now, but I'm pretty sure I know whats wrong.
First: You need to give the Factory the Build In Progress ability, otherwise it doesn't build. Buildings have their own ability (so it can be canceled) for construction. If they don't, it gives an error and just builds instantly as you saw.
Second: You'll notice the factory is weirdly too large in the placement model, but becomes the correct size when you place it. This is because you have the actor set to scale down, but not the model. See you can change the scale in either place, but when you use a model as a placement model, it actually just uses the model scaling. To fix this, create a unique Factory duplicate model, change the model scale to be shrunk down as you want, change the actor scale to 1.0, and you should be good to go with that. In other words, use the Model scale field instead of the Actor scale field when possible.
Third: For the Power Generator having a built Power Generator sitting in the middle of the construction animation, this is a problem where I don't know an elegant solution. It uses the field Art - Model (Build), but the problem is that the Power Generator has no build animations. One solution to this is to use a placeholder model in that field instead. For example, you could change the field to Terran Tarmac; I think that might work visually.
I've attached a modified version of the map which fixes the first and the third issue to use as reference if you'd like. If you have any other issues I'd be happy to help, I'll try to keep up on the thread.
0
I'm pretty sure the Insane AI does cheat, getting like a 30% bonus to all resources mined.
0
What is the intended directory structure to make these work as imports?
Just answered my own question after messing around: just import them to the top, no directory structure.
0
If you upload the file I'll take a look at it if you want.
I kind of don't know what to make of that from your description alone.
0
@Sherlia: Go
The main issue (I think) is that if your building model doesn't have a construction animation, it will just default to the standard animation, which unfortunately means you have a giant building just sitting there. I don't know of a way around this, but I'm sure there is one. Unfortunately, specifying nothing in the construction model field just gives an error and a placeholder sphere model.
0
BasharTeg's suggestion _was_ essentially that you hit the team color button next to the minimap though. You aren't giving an indication that you understand that that's actually a mode, it makes all allies colored yellow, enemies colored red, your own units colored green, and all others colored white, it's not a bug or strange behavior. It sounds like all you did was disable the ability to have that button take effect.
In other words, there was no change, except you hit the button somewhere between now and then.
0
I think you might want to tone down the pitch down, they're low, but not that low.
0
I had no idea there was a way to set it manually - I personally just set the Z-offset of the selection circle at like, -10, so that it's buried in the ground and effectively invisible.
0
@Zackreaver: Go
I've actually completed a Dawn of War style squad system for a map I'm working on, so I have a piece of the puzzle. I think your map concept sounds pretty cool, there aren't very many original PvP strategy game concepts on bnet right now, or it doesn't feel that way to me.
I don't think you'd find a data-only solution that would be complete and good. I've looked at some ways to accomplish this sort of thing with data and it seems to me that organizing groups of units like this just seems saner when done with triggers. Everything you've mentioned sounds really straightforward to do with triggers. You could use data if you just want your units to travel in a group, I imagine there'd be a way to have the units issue an order at their commander to follow him, but you can run into some outside cases where units get stuck on one another and things like that that would probably be easier to handle with triggers, possibly a combination.
The way I'd do it with a trigger-based core, based on my experiences creating a squad-command system: you want to create a very large unit group array. Have a trigger give every commander-type unit a Custom Value, which for internal purposes will be the commander's unit group's ID number. When a unit falls under the leadership of a commander, get the commander's custom value, and place it in the appropriate address in the unit group array, and also give those units the custom value as well just so you have an easy way to figure that out.
Once you have the units in groups, you need a way to make them cohere as a unit. The major issue I can think of off the top of my head is - how large are these units? Having the units maintain a visually pleasing coherency is a different task depending on if they're units of 4-6 or 40-60. The most straightforward way is to just have the units follow the commander - literally issue a follow order. Give them a behavior to make them uncommandable and all that. This could be a real clusterf@#$ though with lots of units that travel at different speeds, or with too many units. The way I do my squads is when a unit receives orders, I use a slightly weird process to copy-paste the command units orders to the followers; you could do something similar with move orders. It's the sort of thing you just have to mess with until you get good results.
Everything else is just a matter of applying and removing behaviors.
I think generally its a good idea even if you use data in this way to keep the units in unit groups and keep track of them that way as a back up system. You could do something, for example, like put a "Rally Unit" button, and then when that ability is activated, call a trigger that rubber bands all the units to their commander. Another good thing to do would be to have a trigger that, when a battle starts, makes sure all the appropriate units are present and accounted for.
I think your biggest challenge is going to be aesthetic, and making these theoretical ideas actually play well in practice, the mechanics are pretty straightforward, however you do it.
0
Well if you just want to create multiple levels for a tower with minor differences, you really don't even need to create entirely new units. Depending on what you want to do, I think you could easily accomplish the same just applying behaviors and such.
0
Gonna use this to add flanking bonuses to my mod, this is really cool.
0
Is it possible, using triggers or trigger-applied data effects, to alter a unit's height or vision height? I don't mean the height of the model, I mean the game mechanic of relative height, so that the unit can or can't see over cliffs.