Well its not applicable for gamers, its more for map-makers, this way they can make it so for all spawn points, the workers spawn and equal distance away from the minerals.

Also Crystal, is it better to use hallucinated minerals, this way in like 3/4 player maps you wont have buildings spawned in the other locations?

thezanursic

5497 Posts

January 04 2013 07:18 GMT

#24

On January 04 2013 12:03 Pucca wrote:
Is there actual statics of how many more minerals this will give each player?

This would be very interesting to know!

Freakling

Germany1533 Posts

January 04 2013 10:17 GMT

#25

Where this is useful? -
Normally you really really want to avoid placing minerals at the top of main hatch/CC/Nex. Simply because a good worker split is hard to do at that position and will always delay you initial income a bit - which subsequently will delay all worker production (until the point where you would cut workers first at least), which aggregates to a small, but definitely noticeable econ disadvantage.
Exact numbers depend on the actual setup of minerals, the map and the player micro of course.
But even without exact numbers, it's not only a matter of actual disadvantage, but also of player comfort.

This problem usually occurs on 3-player maps that have a start position on the top side of the map. Look at Great Barrier Reef, Outsider, Ouloer, Triathlon or Aztec for example, they all have at least a major part of their mineral lines to the side, although that makes them more vulnerable.

However, the solution isn't as straight forward...

The stack bug, mentioned in the article, is a real problem, and also appears if you place overlapping minerals (or any building-unit) at the right side of the SL.
Hallucinated critters are an alternative.
If you use neutral buildings instead, the problem is that on maps with more than 2 spawns, the free spawns will have neutral buildings partially blocking them.
There's one neat thing you can do with that, though: place neutral command centers on each spawn of a (3) map, and you'll get an infestable CC for Zerg on the free spawn in each game. Example: + Show Spoiler +

(3)Ürbän Wärfärë Täctïxxx
[image loading]

radley

Poland582 Posts

January 04 2013 15:06 GMT

#26

what if u block all area around main building? Peons are being spawned?

traceurling

United States1240 Posts

January 04 2013 17:28 GMT

#27

They'll probably be spawned below the CHN, except a lot more than usual so there'll be empty space between workers and CHN...just my guess..

CrystalDrag

173 Posts

January 04 2013 18:38 GMT

#28

They will not be created at all.

LML

Germany1785 Posts

January 04 2013 20:08 GMT

#29

On January 04 2013 12:19 konadora wrote:
think i saw this somewhere where someone used a neutral temple to achieve the same results. regardless, this will possibly open up to more balanced / rotation symmetrical maps

yea, definitely not the first attempt to do something like this, it has been there before but never really was anything that anyone cared about enough to use it as it's not really a problem, usually at least.

btw, why are some of the pictures having full mineral fields? Just set it to 0 minerals and hallucinations in order to make it so that players do not gain any extra minerals and also don't have to bother with these.

traceurling

United States1240 Posts

January 04 2013 20:33 GMT

#30

How does the stack bug work? Like what problems does it cause and what causes it?

Freakling

Germany1533 Posts

January 04 2013 21:47 GMT

#31

What causes it/how does it work?:
If any unit is overlapping the 4x3 tile area that makes up a spawn point (i.e. the initial CC/Nex/Hatch) at game start, it is removed (the exact order seems to be place CC/Hatch/Nex/place workers [hence the position changing works], finally remove the unit). If that unit is a building-unit (this includes resources), it can happen that the part of the main building [CC/Nex/Hatch], that would have been covered by the removed building, becomes buildable again (any full overlapping tiles will become buildable, as well as tile-high overlaps of only one pixel [or more obviously] a the right side of the spawn [hence you cannot use buildings to move workers beyond the right side], other partial overlaps depend [it's complicated]...)
So, because part (or all) of the area, that's taken up by your initial main building is buildable now, you can stack further buildings on it (only one stack, after that the engine will correctly recognize that area as build on, but the bug won't disappear, even if you repeatedly destroy and rebuild the stacked buildings, unless the main building itself is destroyed or, in case of a CC, lifted).

So what's the problem?:
First of, it's just something that will alienate players, it's something one is not used to, that is not supposed to happen, that one would not expect.
But there are some serious balance/gameplay implications as well.
Think protoss vs. x: Manner pylon? Laughable. We can go manner proxy gateway now!
Or just defensively , you could place pylons/sunks/canons that are [almost] unreachable for melee units and hard to target (i.e. click on) for any other unit. Just think of a ZvZ with an invincible sunken in the main...
Other abuses, that I haven't tried out yet, is, if the stack bug applies to the whole spawn point (the whole 4x3 tile area of your main building) you could try one of the following things:
I. TvP: Build a CC or factory on top of the enemy Nexus (both have larger collision boxes than a Nex) and thereby stop probes from returning gathered resources (not sure if this even works, but if it did...)
II. ZvP [or ZvT]: Abuse the smaller collision box of hatches to place a proxy hatch right on top of the enemy main building, where it would be hard (or even impossible) to reach by melee units) [not tested as well]...
However, melee units still have a little bit of range and hence may still be able to hit a stacked building.
But I am sure, some will test it out immediately

Foolishness

United States3044 Posts

January 05 2013 00:00 GMT

#32

This is such a great idea. The amount of work you put into this is fantastic.

CrystalDrag

173 Posts

January 05 2013 01:27 GMT

#33

Terran and Protoss cannot build on hatchery, because of creep.

[image loading]

Apparently very strange for jerg.

if a HCN is completely obscured by neutral buildings, then workers will spawn farther away.
Andd anyway... Terran hardly has melee units, and protoss zealots do have range enough to hit the hatchery.

traceurling

United States1240 Posts

January 05 2013 01:59 GMT

#34

Lol that's interesting...
Also, if a player were to build their buildings arranged around the CHN ingame in the proper positions, would that spawn them on the close side to the minerals? Not very practical but useful to kno...

Freakling

Germany1533 Posts

January 05 2013 09:36 GMT

#35

Depends... if the gap between the collusion boxes of the buildings involved (including your main building) is big enough to allow workers to fit in , they'll likely spawn between the buildings...
Spawning principles for StarCraft are very simple: Start below the bottom left corner of the building, if that spot is blocked, spawn counterclockwise at the nearest spot, were the spawned unit would fit in, if there's no space, display "building exit is blocked" message and don't spawn...

Crystal, does the first picture mean, that it actually works?

CrystalDrag

173 Posts

January 07 2013 14:32 GMT

#36

@freakling yes it does actually work, but the time it would take to float a CC... However, if a protoss player were to see a floating factory/cc going towards the nexus, a probe right next to the nexus would prevent it from landing.

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