On August 26 2010 12:13 Tropics wrote: roarman, you have no idea what you are talking about
blizz didnt do any of that intentionally in brood war. brood war actually had magic boxes, and they were called that because they made units behave in special ways they normally wouldn't have. the ai was being broken, you think muta stacking which took 7 years to get discovered was intentional?
magic box is not in starcraft 2, not even slightly, and you do those things by simply patrolling or moving units. the only way you could possibly think magic box is in starcraft 2 is if you don't know what magic boxes were in brood war.
Sorry, I can't resist - what's your source? You must work for Blizzard or something, right; that's how you know all this.
because ive played starcraft for the past 4 years and anyone whos even remotely interested in the game will at some point have seen this stuff
where do you come up with this
"well how do u no blizz didnt invent muta stack???? IT ONLY TOOK 7 YEARS TO GET DISCOVERED, IT MUST HAVE BEEN INTENTIONAL"
Oh boy, 4 years. Gosu...
Wave your fucking e-peen elsewhere, dude. The same argument can be applied to what you're saying. OH IT MUST BE A "GLITCH IN THE AI" BECAUSE IT DOESN'T BEHAVE AS I PERSONALLY INTUITIVELY THINK IT SHOULD....get a fucking grip.
Are you capable of rationally debating without calling people idiots and cursing all the time, or can you just act like a 12-year-old halo rager?
^ That post, is made in style of all your posts in this thread. Seriously...doesn't make you cool.
Tropics is right too btw. The Magic Box does not exist in SC2. Whats giving people the illusion that the mystical magic box is actually there is merely just the player spreading out his units and they retain their spread as they move. The units take the quickest path to their destination. Thats all it is >_< The "Magic Box" technique used in the muta vs thor example is simply moving your mutas over the thors before attacking them. This works because all of the mutas are in range of the thor when they are told to attack so they just stand ground and attack keeping their spread. If you just A-move, the mutas will go up to the thor until they are in range, and since all mutas obviously have the same range it causes them to stack and die to the thors splash.
On August 26 2010 12:46 R0YAL wrote: Tropics is right too btw. The Magic Box does not exist in SC2. Whats giving people the illusion that the mystical magic box is actually there is merely just the player spreading out his units and they retain their spread due to using the patrol command. Thats all it is, the magic box is taking credit from patrol >_< The "Magic Box" technique used in the muta vs thor example is simply moving your mutas over the thors before attacking them. This works because all of the mutas are in range of the thor when they are told to attack so they just stand ground and attack keeping their spread. If you just A-move, the mutas will go up to the thor until they are in range, and since all mutas obviously have the same range it causes them to stack and die to the thors splash.
Formation stays the same with "move" as opposed to attack move in certain numbers as well. It's in the OP. Patrolling is simply his method of putting his units into a formation. You can manually put them into a formation as well.
On August 26 2010 12:13 Tropics wrote: roarman, you have no idea what you are talking about
blizz didnt do any of that intentionally in brood war. brood war actually had magic boxes, and they were called that because they made units behave in special ways they normally wouldn't have. the ai was being broken, you think muta stacking which took 7 years to get discovered was intentional?
magic box is not in starcraft 2, not even slightly, and you do those things by simply patrolling or moving units. the only way you could possibly think magic box is in starcraft 2 is if you don't know what magic boxes were in brood war.
Sorry, I can't resist - what's your source? You must work for Blizzard or something, right; that's how you know all this.
because ive played starcraft for the past 4 years and anyone whos even remotely interested in the game will at some point have seen this stuff
where do you come up with this
"well how do u no blizz didnt invent muta stack???? IT ONLY TOOK 7 YEARS TO GET DISCOVERED, IT MUST HAVE BEEN INTENTIONAL"
Oh boy, 4 years. Gosu...
Wave your fucking e-peen elsewhere, dude. The same argument can be applied to what you're saying. OH IT MUST BE A "GLITCH IN THE AI" BECAUSE IT DOESN'T BEHAVE AS INTUITIVELY THINK IT SHOULD....get a fucking grip.
Are you capable of rationally debating without calling people idiots and cursing all the time, or can you just act like a 12-year-old halo rager?
^ That post, is made in mocking style of all your posts in this thread. Seriously...doesn't make you cool.
did you genuinely think me saying id been playing for 4 years was a brag
hahahaha ok now that we've established how insecure you are lets move on
ok, lets say ai is designed that way. (since apparently you think it was intentional for stacks of mutas to go around one shotting marines and workers, this isnt something im going to change) it still alters the way the game handles entirely, regardless of why it does. in sc2, no action does that. your units hold formation regardless.
pointing out stupidity is as rational as it gets, too. why should i respect an argument that is both inherently wrong and being presented in an utterly ridiculous fashion when if you actually put some thought into what you were saying you'd realize how ridiculous it is.
why do you think im angry because im being aggressive? its the internet, not real life. i am emotionally unphased, it seems like you're the one getting annoyed if anything BUT WAIT its the internet and i realize that sometimes the tone you put across in posts does not actually match your emotions right now because i am a rational human being
On August 26 2010 12:46 R0YAL wrote: Tropics is right too btw. The Magic Box does not exist in SC2. Whats giving people the illusion that the mystical magic box is actually there is merely just the player spreading out his units and they retain their spread due to using the patrol command. Thats all it is, the magic box is taking credit from patrol >_< The "Magic Box" technique used in the muta vs thor example is simply moving your mutas over the thors before attacking them. This works because all of the mutas are in range of the thor when they are told to attack so they just stand ground and attack keeping their spread. If you just A-move, the mutas will go up to the thor until they are in range, and since all mutas obviously have the same range it causes them to stack and die to the thors splash.
Formation stays the same with "move" as opposed to attack move in certain numbers as well. It's in the OP. Patrolling is simply his method of putting his units into a formation. You can manually put them into a formation as well.
The magic box exists.
Or move, whatever... The AI just takes the quickest path to its destination.
On August 26 2010 13:00 Tropics wrote: ok, lets say ai is designed that way. (since apparently you think it was intentional for stacks of mutas to go around one shotting marines and workers, this isnt something im going to change) it still alters the way the game handles entirely, regardless of why it does. in sc2, no action does that. your units hold formation regardless.
I was committed to stopping the derailment of this thread, but you're too wrong to not call you out. NO. THEY. DON'T. Watch the damn video. Are you really that stupid, ignorant, blind, stubborn... drunk?
Tropics the magic box is definitely in the game, just like brood war. It was never a glitch; it's intentional. It's the very mechanic Blizzard programmed into the game for units keeping formations. Muta stacking was of course an unintentional side effect of it, but that doesn't mean magic boxes are themselves glitches. Read about how the magic boxes work in brood war and then go test it for yourself in SC2; it's super easy to do! You'll find it works in exactly the same way.
Again, it's the very mechanism Blizzard used for unit formations (and spell-casting too in BW, but that's irrelevant in SC2 with smart-casting). Without magic boxes a group of units would always clump up into a very tight ball when doing any move command anywhere, which is usually not desirable. That's why magic boxes exist in the first place.
The only thing you're right about is attack move mutas clumping having nothing really to do with the magic box. That's just because the leading mutas stop when they are in range to fire, but the trailing mutas will keep going until they are also in range. Obviously this causes them to clump up. But you should still be aware of the magic box when issuing a move command with mutas, so you don't accidently clump them up in that way also. Like if you have too many mutas in a group, so their natural spread makes them bigger than the magic box. This will cause them to clump up. You should be aware of this.
everything you said there was true, but its not because of any special magic box knowledge. thats just how those units behave when you move them around, they keep formation. in bw it was a special sized box, with air units at least, move them anywhere on the map and they'll hold their formation.
On August 26 2010 13:29 Tropics wrote: everything you said there was true, but its not because of any special magic box knowledge. thats just how those units behave when you move them around.
What are you talking about? That's just how those units behave (or any units for that matter) BECAUSE of the magic boxes. Without the magic boxes they would behave differently (always clump). The units follow the game code. They obviously don't know how to keep formation unless they have been programmed to keep formation. That programmed mechanism is the magic box.
Go test it in SC2. Units will not hold formation if they are spread out too much (i.e. if they are spread out bigger than the magic box).
On August 26 2010 13:29 Tropics wrote: everything you said there was true, but its not because of any special magic box knowledge. thats just how those units behave when you move them around, they keep formation. in bw it was a special sized box, with air units at least, move them anywhere on the map and they'll hold their formation.
I think you're the one lacking understanding about magic boxes. Units in SC and SC2 only retain their formation if they're not spread larger than the magic box. So in BOTH games, a far ovie would make the mutas stack since they're spread too far apart. The only difference in SC2 is that once the mutas are stacked, it seems Blizzard made them start autospreading, which is good vs thors, bad vs everything else.
Hello new here, i was about to post somethign simlar to this - thought i was all clever and such. but there you go. i was exploring this to slove the emp zealot problem vid below if it adds anything to this. if not i'll go back into my corner. :s
On August 26 2010 13:37 dvide wrote: Go test it in SC2. Units will not hold formation if they are spread out too much
This is exactly the case, no matter what the term used to describe the phenomenon is.
It's not a semantic argument. He's saying there is no phenomenon at all, or at the very least that it is somehow entirely different to how it works in brood war. The guy who made the video above shows it off well. Note how the units either clump together or remain in formation, depending on where you click and how far they are spread out.
Is there really a limit of about 16-20? I know magic boxes have their limits for maintaining formations but I've always been under the impression that it's distance and area based rather than unit numbers. Can someone do some experimenting and see if it's numbers or formation size that breaks this "technique"?
On August 26 2010 14:05 Vokasak wrote: Is there really a limit of about 16-20? I know magic boxes have their limits for maintaining formations but I've always been under the impression that it's distance and area based rather than unit numbers. Can someone do some experimenting and see if it's numbers or formation size that breaks this "technique"?
I didn't FRAPS it, but I messed around with the Unit Matchup map thing earlier with all different sized groups of banelings. I think what it comes down to is that past 15-20 lings, you don't really gain much of a benefit from having them all inside the Magic Box (and thus, saving their formation), since they're going to be too close to each other. The patrol micro thing still spaces them out a bit regardless of the size of their group though, from what I tried.
Seems like if you have that many of them at once anyway that they'd be at separate parts of the maps regardless, IMO.
On August 26 2010 13:29 Tropics wrote: everything you said there was true, but its not because of any special magic box knowledge. thats just how those units behave when you move them around, they keep formation. in bw it was a special sized box, with air units at least, move them anywhere on the map and they'll hold their formation.
Calm down, dude. Believe or not, the fact that "thats just how those units behave", is because there are magic boxes in the game. This is really obvious to anyone who understands the term and is equivalent to BW, even though some "side effects" of magic boxes seemed to have been removed for SC2 (forced spread for stacked Mutas). The exact size and effects of these boxes should definately be explored for maximum usability. Even if, for some nostalgic reason, you only want to use it for BW, please accept that others want to refer to a general feature of an rts game engine and just move along.
EPT
