SC2Mapster

Hey, wasn't sure where to make this topic so this will have to do.

I'm the creator of a fairly popular SC2 arcade map (Tech Wars 2). For a long time I didn't have any time to update it but now I do so I thought I'd make some minor changes.

Small problem: I don't have the map file any more.

I worked on this project with a co-creator, one of my oldest (internet) friends. He disappeared mysteriously about a year ago (I'm worried yes but no idea how to find him - I think he just decided to leave the internet and change everything irl), and all the map backups were on a shared google drive folder that he created. Now it's gone. Meanwhile, my macbook died a few months ago so I lost whatever was on there. I don't have *any* versions of the map as far as I know. Maybe a really old one on a harddrive somewhere in my parents' house 10,000km away :p

So obviously the map is still up on bnet and people are playing it, so it still exists. The question is - is there any way I can download my map from blizzard and open it for editing? The map is locked, unfortunately (actually I did unlock it a few versions ago but the other guy must have locked it again on an update).

Any suggestions, any ways around this?

Cheers,

Alex

@Kueken531: Go

Sorry, I totally forgot to reply, but this post solved all of my problems, and the launch/impactguide related stuff was going to be my next question, so nice prediction :)

@Kueken531: Go

Okay, that kind of makes sense.

I just tried putting a second damage effect (with no damage) in the set, and linking one of the beams to it. Now no beams appear. Any idea?

Alternatively, how would I go about having separate beam actors without creating them with an action? Sorry if that sounds stupid, but I'm more of a trigger than data guy to be honest and have barely even touched beams before.

What I'm trying to accomplish: I have a custom turret that has a duplicate of the diamondback's weapon. I want three beams to appear in a line and hit the target.

I've managed to get a beam's starting position to move using a local offset site operation in launch site ops, and that seems to work perfectly well. The problem is that I have three different beam actors, two of which have site ops on them (left and right), but only one beam (the left one) appears!

The only difference between the actors is the launch site ops field. Everything else, including the event list, is the same. There's a lot to go through to figure out what is causing this, and I've been doing so for the past three hours to no avail, so I figured asking here might be a good idea. I hope I'm just missing something.

Cheers, Alex

edit: It's the action actors I have three of, all using the same beam actor. I tried making different beam actors too, but it didn't seem to make any difference.

Yep, I kind of came to that conclusion. It's a shame really, that'd be a really nice data editor feature, though I can see why they didn't implement it because I'd have no idea how to either.

Cheers. I did use triggers :)

@irok2002: Go

Well, you're supposed to stop your teammates from dying by building in their base :P As for the losing as soon as one player on your team dies, yep, but that will all change in the major update we'll be releasing soon (maybe today, maybe tomorrow).

And nice one cloud wolf :)

Hi, I have an effect that deals damage equal to 10% of units in an area's max hp. I'd like to drain resources equal to the damage dealt (multiplied by a factor). I could do this in triggers easily enough, and I probably will have done already by the time someone replies, but it'd be nice to know if there's a way to do this with data?

Cheers, Alex

For the past couple of months, me and a mate have been developing a SC2 map that is essentially a remake of Tech Wars in WC3, but to a much higher level of quality and with lots more cool things. Anyway, we've finally got to the point where we think we should bring some outside people in to test it with us. We've made some AI, and it works pretty nicely but it's obviously not the same as playing against humans, so we could use some help :)

Quick summary:

- 3v3 in 3 lanes

- Build buildings that autospawn units

- Controlling technology, by having more units than the enemy near some pylons in the centre, unlocks more units.

- Units go to the nearest tech, then to the nearest tech to the enemy, then to the enemy. So you can build to back up your allies but your units will only help you DESTROY your own opponent.

- Destroy the enemy bases to win.

- Buy harvesters to increase your income.

- Working (but not that challenging) AI

- Quite a few custom units and other things

What we need help with: - BALANCING. This is the main thing. There are definitely some units that are far too powerful in certain situations, but it's hard to identify them playing against bots.

- Bugs. We can generally find most bugs ourselves, but obviously the more people looking, the better.

- Suggestions. We've really left the map open to fairly indefinite expansion, so any suggestions are welcome, and if they're good we may well include them.

My ID is snazzman#349 on EU, the other developer of this map is called marc512 on here and he's Overdrive (will add # later), also on EU. It's probably best to just post here though because we aren't on bnet unless we're testing this map basically.

Thanks a lot, Alex :)

Note: This is for WoL, in case you weren't sure.

Sorry to bump, but could someone clarify how to do this:

"The only solution is to use triggers to break the chain and start a new cluster of linked morphing units."

I have no idea. We're not getting any vanishing buttons any more but still lots of "x has too many abilities" warning messages in game. I've tried removing a few things early on in the tree but the errors don't even go away, and I have no idea how to add a button back in with triggers apart from with catalog functions. And that won't work right, since it'll get upset about the number of abils again?

@DrSuperEvil: Go

Just to clarify, are you saying that there's nothing in the units or abilities themselves that link them all together, and that each unit is given all of the morph abilities that anything it can morph to or from has too, when the map is run? I'm not sure how our map is broken then, because although we definitely do have more than 64 morph abilities, there is no one unit that could be connected to more than 20 or so... Unless units are also connected through build abilities and it also includes the SCV that builds them. We have an SCV that builds barracks and factory etc, and then the barracks and factory can be upgraded to a bunch of different things.

As for the fix, do you mean to take an ability and command card button away from a unit and add them back with catalog functions or something? And if I just do it with one unit near the start of the chain that'll disconnect all the units after it?

Also, this is a really silly bug. You said it's old and common, is there any indication that blizzard are going to fix it at any point ever?

Cheers.

I've been messing around in the data editor for the past few hours to no avail, so I was wondering if somebody could help me with this. I want a banshee type flyer, that has no standard attacks but an ability that bombs an area in a line (underneath the banshee while it is still moving). The projectiles are scattered slightly randomly around it. The banshee should not stop for anything, and as soon as it starts casting the ability it should begin turning round to return to its base (I can trigger this, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it to turn smoothly?)

So I figured out that what I might want is a persistent effect that periodically (every 0.2 sec or so) creates the next effect. Now this is where I get stuck, because I don't know how to make something like Search Area that just picks a random point rather than a unit. How do I do this?

Alternatively, I could make an ability that just launches a missile, and order the banshee to cast it targeting a random point every 0.2s after sighting its first target (or whenever a target is nearby if I decide to do that). HOWEVER, I made an ability that just creates a banshee launch missile effect (modified to target a point instead of a unit), and it seems to work apart from two things:

1. The missile seems to ignore the height of the banshee, and launches from the position on the ground under it. I tried changing the launch offset in the effect as a workaround but it didn't do anything :(

2. I can't get it to work without stopping the banshee's movement

Actually, after writing this post I've realised I'd prefer to do the second method (the bit starting with 'Alternatively'), so if someone could just tell me how to sort those two problems and get it to return to base smoothly I'll be on my way. But if someone knows how to do a search area sort of thing to find a random point I'd still be interested for future reference. I want to get good at this bloody editor.

Oh, and just a note: don't worry about user interactions or anything, this is a tug of war style map and this unit will never be commandable by a player.

Cheers.

@KenjI03: Go

Just a hunch, but are your resource creation and playercount triggers both being called on map initialisation? Because, if so, the order in which you place them is important. The playercount one needs to be higher up in the trigger editor. For safety, you could change the event for the resource one to time elapsed 0.1 sec or something.

I could be wrong, but I thought it was worth suggesting.

That wouldn't really explain the spawning in bottom left thing though. Are UraniumGuarantee and ZergSpawnZone actual links to actual regions, or are they variables that you set in another trigger? And if so, is that trigger running at map initialisation too?

@playpong: Go

This has happened to me. I have a "special event" player that isn't listed in the lobby that got assigned the same colour as a player. I didn't find the reason (although I suspect it might be because it isn't set up to appear in the lobby), but I fixed it by looping through each colour until I find a free colour and assign that to it. Pain in the arse but it's not too bad.

That's great, thank you so much. I've got it working, buuut it seems to bypass the cooldown of the weapon. So it works fine but just attacks super fast. Any ideas on how to fix this?

Edit: never mind, I managed to do it by making a persistent effect that just waits the same time as the weapon cooldown

Okay, so I have a unit that is essentially a ghost that sets enemies on fire (gives them a behaviour) for a few seconds when it attacks them. To increase the effectiveness of this unit, I'd like it so it selects enemies that aren't already on fire over ones that are, in order to have the maximum number of enemies burning at any one time, as opposed to it just attacking the same burning unit over and over. I could just add a validator that checks if they have the behaviour, but then it wouldn't attack units that are on fire at all, and I just want it to prioritise ones that aren't. I could do this with triggers and it would probably be cleaner, but I feel like a data based approach could work better overall and probably be more efficient. I'm not great with the data editor though, so if anyone could guide me as to how to do this I'd be very grateful :)

Also, just to complicate things a little more, I'd like this to be an upgrade for the unit if possible. So it doesn't initially behave this tactically, it has to be researched.