I've been working on this project in secret on and off for a couple of months. I wanted a way to test and find new build orders and compare timings with other build orders for all the races.
--------------------------------edit---------------------------------------------- I've uploaded the site temporarily on my webserver. I could use some help with alpha testing and suggestions.
Key Shortcuts: TAB or END : Jump to next completion Space : Move forward 1 second Default SC2 Shortcut keys -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE 5/30/2012:
Almost all actions needed to create a build order should be working. I am still tweaking the interface, so you may see weird bugs. Please feel free to post them to this thread. Thanks.
This looks really good! I would love to try it out once it's finished.
The only suggestion I have is having a feature that allows you to login so you can save builds. It would save a lot of time and allow you to go back and tweak things, if you come across a timing that counters what you are doing.
On May 22 2012 00:27 TheSwamp wrote: The only suggestion I have is having a feature that allows you to login so you can save builds. It would save a lot of time and allow you to go back and tweak things, if you come across a timing that counters what you are doing.
It'll work more like pastebin, where you can create/view/save anonymously.
I'm currently finishing up the core building system for all races, after that is completed I'm going to open it up for anyone to use.
I am looking for a graphics designer to help make it look pretty, if anyone is interested.
This looks very promising! I tried my ZvT build and found some issues though but I guess that's to be expected at this early stage so here we go:
- Can't seem to spawn creep no matter what I select.
- How do i take a third? Zerg needs this pretty fast sometimes so I think it should support at least 3 bases.
- When queens get to the second row of units I can't seem to select them when there are units being built at the same time. Blocks spawn larvae.
- Same thing with the larvae icons, can't select them while units are building since they are always on the second row. Selecting from hatch works though.
- While morphing lair you cant select larvae on the hatch and the separate larvae icon is usually blocked at this stage as I described above. This blocks all unit production from that base
Edit: The ones about not being able to select queen/larvae icons were caused by me placing my initial buildings by clicking on the hatcheries rather than in the empty box at the bottom which I didn't see at first. This made everything shift down a bit and cover things up later on. Right now you can even build extractors on the hatches even if you have taken all the geysers already (click build extractor and then click on a hatch/base. the building will show up as a big icon just below the hatch but you can't mine from it).
Oh, and it would probably be a good idea to have one icon per unit type with a number on it like when watching a replay. I'm having a screen filled with lings and ovies atm You already did it for drones and larvae so hopefully it's easy to implement.
Also, it would be nice to have a kill button for units so you can simulate scouts, attacks etc
Hmm another idea: Maybe add a start/stop option to let the clock tick automatically (blizzard faster) so you can try the build in real time, I think it could help to get a feel of the flow/timings. Might be out of scope though.
I have just tried it and I like the concept, it should be very good for optimizing builds. Here are my suggestion:
- Add some text/boxes to make it more clear what is what on the screen (like "main", "natural", "units tab", etc). I know it's only alpha but anyway... - SCVs which finished constructing buildings should automatically return to mining minerals - Add some automation: make it possible to build a specific unit non-stop from a structure. Say, I start a new build as Terran. I want to keep building SCVs non-stop until 16 workers. So, if I could at the very start click, say "Shift+S" instead of "S" and not worry about CC production anymore, that would be very handy. Same for marines, hellions, tanks etc. - Make it possible to jump to a specific time (or, maybe simply add buttons ">10", ">30", ">60", ">120" or something like that) - Make it possible to queue up a building/unit before you have enough resources to start building it. Say, I want to build a factory as soon as I have 100 gas. Instead of guessing how soon I would have it or clicking ">1" many times, I would tell an SCV to build it, and he would do it as soon as the resources are available. - I would suggest highlighting important things in the BO panel, like production structures, addons and gases. No one really cares about the hundred of scv and marine lines in BO panel. - finally, it would be great if this tool worked as a custom map, so I could click actual buildings on the actual map. But that would probably require you to re-code everything in a different language? I'm just throwing it out there...
bugs I noticed: - I told an SCV to build a barracks, then I have shift-clicked him to minerals so that he resumes mining once done. This seemed to cancel the barracks, but it wasn't removed from BO and resources not returned. - refresh page. Click "jump", then click ">1" twice. Start building an SCV. "Next to complete" won't work after this.
I hope this helps, I think I'll be using this for sure!
I played around with the Zerg builder and i didn't see it account for travel time for building construction. It's imho very vital for timings to account for the mineral loss of workers travelling to the destination so it would be nice if you could add that feature (unless it's there and i missed it).
On May 30 2012 19:14 Morfildur wrote: I played around with the Zerg builder and i didn't see it account for travel time for building construction. It's imho very vital for timings to account for the mineral loss of workers travelling to the destination so it would be nice if you could add that feature (unless it's there and i missed it).
Also, how do you send a drone scout away?
I've been thinking about this, and I may just add the "travel time" into the construction time, but that wouldn't show any mineral loss. It's also a bit tricky for drone transfer to an expansion. There is no easy way of showing there are "traveling" drones, unless I create a new tile area just for that.
Great job with the zerg build simulator; it seems pretty good. Personally I found it did account for either build travel time, or rather it would have probably been just less-than-optimal mining speeds (depending on the map) doing that, but still it simulated some sort of delay which seemed to make things roughly on time for me.
Travel times for transfers or expansions or proxies are pretty hard (virtually impossible) to do automatically, but I suppose the program could ask the player the distance the building is being built, and account for the loss of mining time accordingly. It hardly seems worth it considering the work involved though.
I don't know if this is intentional or not, but I happened to get a 1 second discrepancy (at only 1:41 into the game) by doing identical build orders. The build order was extractor trick, 11 overlord, 10 pool, 10 drone. However, the first time I ran the build, I messed around FIRST by canceling drones 4 times in a row (is that even possible?), an then undo-ed all my actions to the start then re-did the build.
I guess adding a "scout for x distance/time" would also be able to simulate building distance, but not-so-much transfers easily.
Travel times for transfers or expansions or proxies are pretty hard (virtually impossible) to do automatically, but I suppose the program could ask the player the distance the building is being built, and account for the loss of mining time accordingly. It hardly seems worth it considering the work involved though.
I agree with this guy. The build orders will be a few seconds off since it ignores the building distance and etc. And in pro-lvls a few secs may be the difference between a win and a loss. This is, however, pretty good for people who are trying to improve. Great job!!
This is awesome! I have been thinking of creating exactly this for about a year but never had time to start it. I'm glad you did, and it feels way better than if I had done it.
On May 31 2012 05:45 Xapti wrote: I don't know if this is intentional or not, but I happened to get a 1 second discrepancy (at only 1:41 into the game) by doing identical build orders. The build order was extractor trick, 11 overlord, 10 pool, 10 drone. However, the first time I ran the build, I messed around FIRST by canceling drones 4 times in a row (is that even possible?), an then undo-ed all my actions to the start then re-did the build.
Undoing still has some slight discrepancies that I'm trying to fix. This is because I'm resimulating everything from the start. There are some things that might throw it off by a second or two that I'm still trying to find.
EPT
You already did it for drones and larvae so hopefully it's easy to implement.
