SALT is a training mod designed to help you practice both build orders and realistic engagements against friends or AI.
The origional version was released a year ago where it got some people interested including getting a feature on the HuskyStarcraft channel. Since then it has been ported to HOTS and there have been several new features and improvements.
SALT stands for Save And Load Tool, so called because you can save the game into one of three slots and reload without having to start a new game.
Restart the map choosing your starting location and race
Create, edit or import a build
Play through a build order with timings listed in-game and checked off as you complete them
But the simplest way to demonstrate these capabilities would be to show them in action.
These are currently on the NA server. I will be spending tonight/tomorrow uploading these same maps to the EU server and then others later on. Finished uploading to EU, it was quicker than I thought.
Two things of note however, You need to have the option "Menu>Options>Gameplay>Enable enemy unit selection" enabled in order to select your starting location (I'm guessing 99% of people have this setting enabled anyway)
Also if you play with a group of three or more then there is a bug when one player leaves the game. Unfortunately I will not be able to fix this for a few weeks but I thought I would announce it in the mean time.
Sorry about the quality of the video. I only had the garbage software that came preinstalled on my machine and I could do with a better graphics card / microphone.
I hope many of you find this to be a useful tool to improve your game and to have some fun with.
This is nice but a bit overly complicated for what i seek, is there just a simple map with restart option only that records the build i do? I hate the tools reminding me of my build or where i can load builds because i make them myself anyway but a nice quick restart option that puts the build into a nice supply format afterwards would be great tool for helping to write a guide. (or is this already possible with sc2gears?) I don't really like the standard build order format given in the ending screen and i'd like to be able to restart a bit quicker.
On June 21 2013 03:05 wUndertUnge wrote: Has anyone utilzied this yet? It looks like there was a lot of effort put in. I tried it once, but didn't get very far...
Hi wUndertUnge,
There are plenty of people who have sent me their testimonials, so I can assure you it has helped people (even some comments from pros and semi pros). It's still not what I would call "popular" yet but I believe it is the most popular BO tester atm.
I'm curious what you mean that you didn't get very far. If you had trouble finding the maps they are listed under "custom maps" not under "arcade". Also if you could not select a starting location you need to change the setting to "allow enemy unit selection" (on EU it does this automatically but NA versions have not been updated for that yet). By far most people already have that setting enabled so I only realized recently that it may cause confusion for some.
If you mean that you found it clunky or not very helpful that's different. I took a break after the last release but there are a bunch of plans to integrate it into the game more seamlessly making it cleaner, simpler and more functional. To stay tuned you can subscribe to the project page on TL. That way I won't be spamming the general discussion forums unless there is a big announcement.
The site is run by a different person and appears to be broken.
For the moment you will have to create a build yourself with the in game build editor. Go "menu->build orders->create new build" and you can make a build order to play.
There are many shortcomings of this mod which I am adressing in the coming months. SALT is undergoing a massive overhual and will be coming out bigger, better, more user friendly and looking a lot more professional and polished. But it will take me probably half a year to complete at the rate I'm going.
A few days ago I started a blog where I'll be giving details of progress and posting screenshots. If you're interested in keeping up to date with the project you can subscribe to my teamliquid blog here http://www.teamliquid.net/blog/SALT
EDIT: This is a big part of why I wanted to start the blog. To talk about changes and discuss my descission process without having to spam the forums. That just anoys people who don't care. I'll save the forum posts for bigger anouncements.
Thanks for your reply. Hope the development process will be smooth and you'll enjoy the process. I'm not sure what's your view on this, but would it make sense to open source the project and maybe create a small community that could hack away at this really great idea that you have?
I love this mod! Really good work. It was a great idea to turn it into a MOD instead of having it on the arcade. (It took me some searching on the web to find out what had happened to it, since most info pointed to the arcade and there was nothing )
One question, is the AI supposed to work? It doesn't seem to be working for me. The workers just mine and the AI doesn't seem to do anything else.
When you play vs computer it loads the standard Blizzard AI which expects a standard ladder game experience. So SALT confuses the hell out of it and it doesn't know what to do. I'm currently working on creating my own custom AI named Leonardo (he was the tactician from the Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles) which is capable of following and copying build orders and using them against you. This AI will be compatible with SALT however it's still heavily in development and won't come out till next year. It's a shame that some of the other AIs projects kind of disapeared, I would love to see Leonardo face off against other AIs in an AI battle.
Also just a warning but there is a bug where sometimes (about 30% of the time) loading the game does not work when one or more players are Zerg. loading back to the begining works fine though. I think I know what is causing it but the patch won't be out for at least another week.
I will be using it extensively. The build order customization options are great.
So I should not expect to be able to play a game using SALT, just practice my build orders, right? (Have tried terran vs protoss and the protoss AI does nothing at all).
Another question, is there a place where I can find the specifications for the YABOT build order format or some editor/converter or a repository? All the sites that existed that had anything to do with YABOT build orders seem to have gone down. sc2builds.com is up and running but does not have YABOT format build orders, just displays them as formatted text on the webpage.
Thank you very much for your great work. It is well appreciated!
That means that you can get other people into the game and you can both practice against each other. You can invite as many people as can fit in the game, so if it is a 4 spawn map you can fit up to 4 human players in the game. The other players will just be observers by defualt but you can swap players around using the swap function in the menu. Then observers can become the players and vice versa. But for the moment the computer AI doesn't know what to do so it doesn't do anything. That's fine though, doesn't stop you practicing your build.
I have the specs for the YABOT format. SALT still works with YABOT encoded strings but I've moved away from it and started using my own format, imaginatively called "SALT format v1". I can give you links for info if you want.
When you use the built in editor in SALT to create a build order ("menu->build orders->create new build") you should find a button which says "export" that will show you the string for that build. Just copy it using ctrl-c and then you can share it with others. go menu->build orders->import and paste in that string.
Whenever you create a new build order I recomend you export it to string and save in a text file on your computer. That way the next time you use SALT you can import it imediately without having to create it again from scratch. (I wish people wouldn't have to do this work around, but unfortunately it is due to a blizzard bug where banks don't work for extension mods)
I would like to see the specs for your SALT format, I might just code a converter (online or stand alone) to translate from common build order formats into SALT, and share it with the community.
Everyone, I've recieved a bunch of questions about SALT lately (probably because there was a glimpse of it in JaKaTaKs new video (great vid btw).
So it's about time I made an FAQ. If you have questions or don't know what it is try looking here: SALT FAQ
drKobalt, SALT is backwards compatible with the YABOT encoding but there are some major shortcomings with the YABOT format. If you're interested in how I format the string you can take a look here where I was discussing it with another person looking to use it.
If you make some builds using the inbuilt editor PM them to me and I'll add them to the default ones.
EPT
