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I just read this whole thread, and it is disgusting how some of you"discuss" this Macro helper thing with (or rather against) each other.
As for the tool itself, I think it is a cool idea, but it will not be condoned at LAN events. It also gives someone an advantage in macro skill at lower leagues. I don't know if it will really help you train your macro timing skills either.
After 10 games without help tools I could always be within 3 seconds of inject timings, it's just a matter or prioritizing what to learn by heart first.
I do think this thread is getting out of hand though  .
I guess you could use it in private OP, but I assume that Blizzard will ban you for it down the line.
If anything I think you should just use that phone app for macro if you really want a form of timing help, even though I don't recommend it for practicing and becoming a better player.
EDIT: reworded to "some of you", "all" is never fair, since it is simply an exaggeration. My apologies. Just getting tired of the decrease of posting quality lately I guess. Especially the amount of thought people put into their posts sometimes. 
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I think a lot of us are keeping/trying to keep to a somewhat civil discussion...
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I can´t believe how some people kid themeselves.
No matter how much you guys try to spin it this gives you an unfair advantage over the other person playing you. No matter what you think of ladder is is still a competitive environment.And really the fact that people who use this call ladder a training ground is pretty funny for me because that means that they plan to attend some lans or participate in online tourneys which this device is certainly cheating.
But.. of all things you can do to give you an unfair competitive advantage this is not really that bad. I still think the best way to learn is to drop the traning wheels and fall 10000 times so you can learn.
I guess my point is that both sides are exaggerating a lot?
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On July 16 2011 00:55 Harmonious wrote:
If you can put up a reminder to put up the minimap every 5 secs or so, that would be the awesomest thing ever.
Only for practice. I am very good at the minimap for about 5 mins
The mini map is tricky because you don't really want to pop up on top of it (unless you do it real fast and a player reacts to the blip), Its not really square around the borders either and like i said the irfanview image program doesn't have the transparency i seem to need (which isn't a fault of the program, no image view I know of lets you see through it).
Here is the best I could come up with, I just cropped a screenshot and added some "look over there" arrows. Maybe popping that up would work without being too in your face. Then again if you really want to hammer the point home during a training session you could use a giant red arrow that takes up half the screen.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/YykxN.jpg)
Speaking of the limitations of this method, it seems like the 5 pixel border around the outside of the image, and the image being rectangular is it. I tested it out a bit and you can call up more than one instance (for example you could draw a box around something, the lines being 11 pixels wide) but it gets messy as without a smarter batch script with forking as you need a separate link to each image you want to bring up.
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I have to say I'm against using this in a ladder game, but if your just playing against Macro or Die(my fav for the after work "Im to tired, but want to practice" moments') its totally fine. Muscle memory is important.
If your using it ladder games in cheating. Sure, you could have a timer right next to the screen, but its not on the screen, running over the game. If you really want this, play with a metronome.
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This image demonstrates the thinnest line you can get, say you wanted to underline your minerals and gas 5 minutes in because that is when you start floating huge amounts of each.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/4YPPt.jpg)
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To the people saying this should be banned and is cheating.
By that same logic shouldn't Deadly Boss Mods be banned as cheating for WoW?
(for those who don't know DBM would tell you when a boss does XYZ and the timers on his next special move etc and where to go and marks people who have things you need to run away from and move towards)
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Now imagine if you'd practiced starcraft instead of figuring out innovative new ways to do well without getting better
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This was an interesting and at the same time a painful 10 pages to read.
Especially all the "this is clearly cheating" one liner comment, they are purely instigative.
I like that Eleaven is so passionate about giving a different perspective on it, I just hope you don't get carried away too much!
It is always a wierd discussion to have because ones belief or projection of what constitutes a fair game or rule set and what crosses the line comes into play heavily. Making it so that you will have to specify and back up your argument, otherwise it holds no value what so ever, because of the differing perspectives.
What I think happens when people merely state that they consider it to be a hack and a cheat is that they are so proud to be against cheating that it isn't enough for themselves to know that. They have to tell the world about what is just and what isn't. Not only does this make them feel good about themselves or grant them something they wouldn't have gotten if they would've been satisfied in the first place with just their own opinion, but it also gives a sense of power.
Since it's a case where you have to balance a lot of different ideas, angles, scenarios etc to be able to attempt to set up something that would approach fairness, coming in, sweeping all those considerations away, stepping on everything and just plant your flag with your opinion written on it and walk away again.
Maybe I need to explore the above to be able to understand and not get frustrated or even to learn something from it. Rather than, saying they are stupid people because they don't think like me or "deduce" that they must be immature children since the behaviour seems to fit the stereotype.
The things I wanted to point out regarding the subjects at hand are as follows.
Looking at the terms of use, you have to keep in mind the guidelines are written with a certain goal or objective behind them. It should come as no surprise that items of text set up in that fashion correlate with the legal system.
The thing here that I feel is incredibly important and seems to overlooked by some is that what is written is not what they allow or won't allow one to do. It is written to provide an ending barrier to certain possible expected behaviour or to be able to group actions together. The reason for doing is so they will have control over their product and if they want to they can change, enforce, or implement things all under the same space, rather than rewriting the terms of use.
You cannot put everything that is allowed or not allowed in there literally. If you do and don't use the general terms as to group and account for those that you didn't explicitly state, you are at risk of getting abused. Under these general terms even, not everything fits even if you think it automatically does. It doesn't and in many other cases it's valuable to look at what many things surrounding it before attempting to step in.
So those are not valid arguments.
The other point I wanted to touch on is what makes certain things fair and not. I'm way too sleep to do so and I apologize for that. In short, you need to define what kinds of things exactly fall under being actually an advantage. And what is unfair. And then what falls in the space where these to overlap since you certainly cannot just expect to be able to aggregate them. Then if it can be used as such. And then if that is even it's intention.
Many times when reading the trends of logic where a certain situation gets painted and all kinds of assumptions form the basis, I feel they are very similar to how you reason that cutlery enables murder.
I don't know what's going on but I feel really distressed about many of the comments, they could've have easily been avoided, not made, or made useful rather than instigating a deep and totally off topic moral/ethic debate. To which they contribute nothing, hence the use of instigate. And no I just not learned that word, it's just very fitting to the general trend of how it can unfold.
What do I think about it? It really doesn't matter what I think.
Edit: expanded a sentence because it didn't seem clear enough during the re-read.
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On July 16 2011 05:39 Eknoid4 wrote:
Now imagine if you'd practiced starcraft instead of figuring out innovative new ways to do well without getting better
This took me like an hour at work to write up and maybe a few more minutes at home to get the position and image size right. I've probably spent more time reading this thread than writing the scripts.
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On July 16 2011 05:18 Denzil wrote:
To the people saying this should be banned and is cheating.
By that same logic shouldn't Deadly Boss Mods be banned as cheating for WoW?
(for those who don't know DBM would tell you when a boss does XYZ and the timers on his next special move etc and where to go and marks people who have things you need to run away from and move towards)
If i remember right from my smacky wow days all the AddOns you could download were written using their API, when a mod started doing stuff they didn't want they would patch the game to break that functionality of the mod, such as decursive. Blizzard would also take popular features from the AddOns and incorporate them into later patches as well, such as floating combat text.
This isn't hugely similar as far as the software goes as all the script does is pop up an image on a timer. But functionally it does something similar to a really dumb AddOn.
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On July 16 2011 01:07 Deleuze wrote:
As I said before, the only reasonable way forward from this is to incorporate it into a custom map via map editor -
Everyone knows it's being used, there is no possibility of it being view as a hack and it would actually be gain from added functionality with SC2.
The custom maps out there for practicing are already being really well developed by the people that do that, YABOT as an example is an awesome map for this type of practice. I haven't got a chance of making a map that good as I don't design custom maps. This is just a different type of tool.
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people like you disgust me. trying to gain advantages over others just because you dont have the brains to do something
Yeah, clicking a button every x seconds requires so much brains. <_<
If the boring-as-nuts spawn larvae mechanic had an actual strategic decision to be made instead of "click every 25 seconds" then people wouldn't have to make timers.
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On July 16 2011 05:18 Denzil wrote:
To the people saying this should be banned and is cheating.
By that same logic shouldn't Deadly Boss Mods be banned as cheating for WoW?
(for those who don't know DBM would tell you when a boss does XYZ and the timers on his next special move etc and where to go and marks people who have things you need to run away from and move towards)
That is the most irrelevant comparison I've ever heard. I'll just refute your point simply.. Blizzard allows player made addons in WoW, but the do not allow it in Starcraft 2. There are many other flaws in your reasoning, but just the one I stated above is enough = /.
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On July 16 2011 09:21 Razuik wrote:Show nested quote +On July 16 2011 05:18 Denzil wrote:
To the people saying this should be banned and is cheating.
By that same logic shouldn't Deadly Boss Mods be banned as cheating for WoW?
(for those who don't know DBM would tell you when a boss does XYZ and the timers on his next special move etc and where to go and marks people who have things you need to run away from and move towards) That is the most irrelevant comparison I've ever heard. I'll just refute your point simply.. Blizzard allows player made addons in WoW, but the do not allow it in Starcraft 2. There are many other flaws in your reasoning, but just the one I stated above is enough = /.
Like I just said, this isn't an AddOn and it doesn't interact (transfer any information, call methods or hook into the rendering) with blizzard software, but his comparison is still good as it has similar functionality of a really basic AddOn.
The issue is Blizzard have some control over AddOns in wow but shouldn't be able to even see this running. Not that that is really a big issue because if it was complex enough to be really game breaking it would need to interact with Blizzards software.
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This is obviously cheating!
I don't care what you do in-between games but during a game you must rely on yourself and only on yourself (and the tools given by blizzard in-game).
Whatever your intent, this creates an advantage against an unsuspecting opponent and produces unfair encounters. I can't fathom how you could see that as anything else than cheating.
Btw, having a GM friend telling you everything to do during a game IS cheating. An iphone-app helping you too. Basically anything HELPING to do anything in-game on ladder against unsuspecting opponents is cheating. If something is clearly forbidden during tournaments there is no moral justification to use it on ladder (the only competitive environment for the vast majority of players).
Would it be used only in custom games I would have no complaint.
But on ladder games it should be bannable offense.
Unfortunately it might be undetectable or unactionable by Blizzard. Such kind of cheating is the worst.
This is immoral.
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On July 14 2011 19:29 Rannasha wrote:
To all those who call "cheat": I don't see how this is any different than setting up an alarm-clock / cellphone to sound a beep every 12 seconds. In fact, a beep is probably preferable since it doesn't obstruct the screen.
Nevertheless, the preferred way is to just learn to do it without external aids.
So set up an alarm clock external from the game. Why mess with this shit.
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On July 16 2011 13:10 freakhill wrote:
If something is clearly forbidden during tournaments there is no moral justification to use it on ladder
So how do you feel about walling off at the bottom of the ramp? You can't do that at a lot of competitions as they have edited in those sunken depots, but I am sure if you ran into a terran that put a depot + bunker at the bottom of his ramp you would yell for a ban.
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On July 16 2011 13:39 zergrushkekeke wrote:Show nested quote +On July 16 2011 13:10 freakhill wrote:
If something is clearly forbidden during tournaments there is no moral justification to use it on ladder So how do you feel about walling off at the bottom of the ramp? You can't do that at a lot of competitions as they have edited in those sunken depots, but I am sure if you ran into a terran that put a depot + bunker at the bottom of his ramp you would yell for a ban.
This makes no sense, It is plain and simple not the same map.
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While i'm sure the initial purpose of this is noble and to help players better themselves at a rate faster than they would normally achieve on their own, i can't help but express dismay at its existence.
I personally don't approve of this, and don't think it should be used, however, if someone else feels like they want it / need it, and are willing to run the risk of blizzard scanning their running processes and getting caught and banned,
then by all means, continue.
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EPT
