[A] Starbow - Page 514

On January 20 2014 03:56 AnteZ wrote:
Hello,
thanks for this great mod. Your effort is very appreciated. I have taken another look at the problem of clumped movement and I have come up with a new approach (to my knowledge) to spread out units while moving.
The basic idea is to have every unit followed by a neutral unit.
The follower will take up space, and cause the other units in the clump to spread out.

I have hacked together a small demonstration. You can see the result here.
Or search for "spread spread out movement" in the eu custom games (not arcade). I should say that the follower should be made invisible in a serious implementation.


Its a very dirty hack. I made it in 15 minutes and I have close to no experience with the editor. Here is what I did:
I put some marines and neutral zerglings onto the map. Then I modified the zerglings to have a small little sphere as model. I set its push priority to 100 and its movement speed to 2.3.
After that, I created a trigger that orders each zergling to follow one marine upon startup.

As a result, the silky smooth movements of the sc2 engine are mostly preserved, while the clumping is avoided. Further more, the units formation is never the same, although in my tests a preference for an arrow shaped patterns has shone through (similar tobird formations).

Let me know what you think and if you would consider implementing something like this into starbow.

On January 20 2014 07:27 decemberscalm wrote:

And how exactly would you micro backwards?

Zerglings being randomly blocked by invisible followers?

Don't get me wrong, its an interesting idea and attempt at less clumpy movement, but it seems like it would have a TON of flaws. Players need to have reliable movement.

On January 20 2014 10:22 NukeD wrote:

Are you not even going to try it? The way the units move in that video is perfect. Please just try it :/

I have hacked together a small demonstration. You can see the result here.
Or search for "spread spread out movement" in the eu custom games (not arcade). I should say that the follower should be made invisible in a serious implementation.

On January 20 2014 13:39 Gene(S)is wrote:


That way of moving reminds me much more of BW then what we have today, it would also be less frustruating when dealing with say storms and baneling mines.

How are the sound effects in Starbow, do they use the old BW tracks?

On January 20 2014 07:27 decemberscalm wrote:
And how exactly would you micro backwards?

Zerglings being randomly blocked by invisible followers?

Don't get me wrong, its an interesting idea and attempt at less clumpy movement, but it seems like it would have a TON of flaws. Players need to have reliable movement.

On January 20 2014 13:07 Beef Noodles wrote:
I don't know how collision detection works in the editor, but...

Could you give every ground unit a check for if it collides with another unit? If it collides, give it like a 50% chance to take a step in a random direction before continuing on the path on which it is ordered to move? That way, you get predictable movement once units are spaced far enough apart?

I could see it also giving clumped units a "scooby doo" like effect (where they don't really start moving where you want them to at first), because when they are very clumped and they get the command to move, it might start a crazy chain reaction of collisions. If that's the case, maybe try a 20-30% chance to step in a random direction?

Just throwing ideas out

On January 20 2014 21:56 AnteZ wrote:

I don't have all the answers yet, I just wanted to get some feedback as soon as possible. I agree that reliability is of the highest importance - the player must feel in control at any moment.
I also agree that having invisible blocking units on the map is asking for a lot of problems. But it will still be a finite amount of problems so maybe it is worth the trouble.

I am going to fiddle around a little more when I am back from work in a few hours. I wonder if it would feel too strange if we only activate the followers a few seconds after the move command has been issued. This way the very intense in-battle micro should remain largely the same, while the clumping that usually occurs on longer distances (I guess - i havent actually investigated this) should be mitigated.

As for the zergling case: I am not sure what the best way of handling this is. I am thinking of adding some sort of small range aura for every melee unit that deactivates enemy followers in some way.

For the video, I didn't understand the moment where the marine was blocked in by the zergling. Don't units move out of the way automatically unless on hold position? Or is that only for friendly units? Or not for units that are on a move/follow command?

On January 20 2014 23:32 AnteZ wrote:


Not neccessarily. There is a variable called push priority that controls it. My guess is that you can only push units with lower or equal push priority. I have set the push priority of the followers to a very high value so they do not budge.

On January 20 2014 21:56 AnteZ wrote:


I have though of that actually before the idea with the invisible units. But I imagine that it would result in a lot more jerky motions. Think about it: every gap in the unit clump will quickly be filled again and we have to keep making gap by moving a unit in a random direction (jerky and out of the players control). With the followers the gaps are persistent and the units move around them smoothly. Jerkyness might occur when splitting up a clump but not once the units are spread out.

On January 21 2014 07:25 iHirO wrote:
Starbow testing:

I had a play about with the Starbow Tester, here's some things I noticed.

Possible Balance Issues:

• Ghost's Shock ability is stackable meaning that its possible to immbolise units in an area with multiple shots.
  
• Hallucinated observers/science vessels/overseers retain their detection ability.
  
• Defilers can consume free units (e.g. changelings) to restore mana. In a maxed army situation you could have unlimited overseers providing free energy.
  
• Hallucinated Arbiters retain their cloaking field, which could be imbalanced.
  
• Science Vessel's Emp drains all energy and shields, is this spell too strong?
  

Bugs:

• Error messages displayed on screen when attempting to Overcharge non production buildings (e.g. supply depots, tech labs, reactors, CCs etc).
  
• Reavers continue to lock on to target even when no scarabs are available.
  
• Reavers do no damage if friendly units are targeted to be attacked.
  
• Overlord/Dropship/Warp Prism doesn't show their carrying capacity bar.
  
• Overcharge can be continuously dropped on a building, should it be prevented or is it correct behaviour?
  
• Hallucinated changelings glitch when attempting to transform (minor issue).
  
• Hallucinated units don't show a timer.
  
• Non Protoss hallucinations show normal death animations instead of fading away (minor issue).
  
• “Not Enough Energy” message displayed when attempting to chrono boost a geyser.
  
• Unable to hallucinate burrowed units, is this by design?
  

Questions:

• Why are Lurkers the only zerg unit to have a separate unburrow hotkey?
  
• Why can the Medic cast Matrix on mechanical units instead of just biological units? Is this to encourage Bio Mech builds?