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The StarCraft path-finding hack

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Re: The StarCraft path-finding hack

#51

Post by tekromancr »

edias wrote: post #40
GavinB wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is changing the behavior of a group of units because it happens to be grouped with a distant unit really a good thing for the game? It makes for a good story, and it's great fun for the person who discovers it. Players like it, because it lets them beat new players even more easily. But players don't always know what's best for them. This is why Starcraft 2 multiplayer is structured to force players to play on compli…

Your comment on starcraft maps is off. Both SC2 and BW have two sets of maps, UMS maps with custom settings used for fun games and competitive maps made to be racially balanced and produce "good" games. In SC2 UMS maps are part of the arcade where as ladder games are played on tournament maps. The same is true for BW but blizzard didn't have an official ladder so 99% of the games on battle.net were UMS maps, but ICCU…

BW?

Re: The StarCraft path-finding hack

#52

Post by rhokstar »

Rastafarian wrote: post #48
bradleyjg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were all kinds of discoveries like that. I remember when the reaver drop was invented by someone out of MIT. Can't remember his handle but he was one of the top players pre-brood war. Edit: Found him, Zileas aka Tom Cadwell. Brings back the memories.

Reaver drop was not invented by Zileas, he only popularized it.

This is true!

Re: The StarCraft path-finding hack

#53

Post by barbs »

tekromancr wrote: post #51
edias wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment on starcraft maps is off. Both SC2 and BW have two sets of maps, UMS maps with custom settings used for fun games and competitive maps made to be racially balanced and produce "good" games. In SC2 UMS maps are part of the arcade where as ladder games are played on tournament maps. The same is true for BW but blizzard didn't have an official ladder so 99% of the games on battle.net were UMS maps, but ICCU…

BW?

Brood War

Re: The StarCraft path-finding hack

#54

Post by wmil »

jlgreco wrote: post #34
GavinB wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fun unit in multiplayer isn't really a good excuse for a gamebreaking behavior in single player. An examination of what it was that made the Carrier fun might have revealed ways to get similar effects (long range, able to fire while retreating, requires paying minerals for continued use . . .) in a unit that wasn't such a weird gamebreaker. Most people just liked Carriers because it cast a field of enemy unit and A…

Starcraft singleplayer always seemed sort of like Q3A singleplayer to me. Clearly not the main attraction.

It was a lot more like Quake 1 single player. Many people spent more time on the multiplayer, but many people only played the single player.

Re: The StarCraft path-finding hack

#55

Post by edias »

tekromancr wrote: post #51
edias wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment on starcraft maps is off. Both SC2 and BW have two sets of maps, UMS maps with custom settings used for fun games and competitive maps made to be racially balanced and produce "good" games. In SC2 UMS maps are part of the arcade where as ladder games are played on tournament maps. The same is true for BW but blizzard didn't have an official ladder so 99% of the games on battle.net were UMS maps, but ICCU…

BW?

Broodwar, the expansion to the original starcraft.

Re: The StarCraft path-finding hack

#56

Post by edias »

tolmasky wrote: post #49
edias wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. Maybe for beginners but at the competitive level brood lords are so good due to their cost efficiency in that they create "free" units and have very good synergy with infestors which are also known for their cost efficiency.

I'm not sure what your "Not at all" is in response to. I was saying it requires micro-ing from the person going up against them (specifically, you need to blink your stalkers under the brood lords, or tell your units to target the carriers and not the interceptors, etc etc). In other words, they are not units designed to be fought against by just a-clicking in their general direction and letting the AI do the work fo…

It is in response to "their entire strength is in the fact that other units will auto-attack broodlings/interceptors first" which is true but only for the very new players.

Re: The StarCraft path-finding hack

#57

Post by barbs »

The "passing through other units" bug is well known in the community as "Mineral Walking"

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Bugs#Mineral_Walk

Also, I wonder if the author has thought of getting his articles on Starcraft (and maybe Warcraft 2) into Korean? I'm sure there'd be a huge audience for them.

Re: The StarCraft path-finding hack

#58

Post by bradleyjg »

Rastafarian wrote: post #48
bradleyjg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were all kinds of discoveries like that. I remember when the reaver drop was invented by someone out of MIT. Can't remember his handle but he was one of the top players pre-brood war. Edit: Found him, Zileas aka Tom Cadwell. Brings back the memories.

Reaver drop was not invented by Zileas, he only popularized it.

Do you happen to know who invented it? Was it someone else at MIT?

Re: The StarCraft path-finding hack

#60

Post by onedognight »

AnIrishDuck wrote: post #38
ChuckMcM wrote: post #26

I remember thinking to myself, at a talk given by an Activision employee on some Mechwarrior pathing issues, that these guys were re-inventing printed circuit board layout. They had the same sorts of constraints, go from here to there, don't cross certain types of 'terrain' (traces in the layout case). Game units don't get to make vias though :-)

Pathfinding is a much easier problem than circuit routing and can essentially be solved in O(n + k) where n is the number of nodes and k is the number of edges between nodes. Circuit routing is an entirely different beast. A previously routed "shortest" trace from one node to another can obstruct a much shorter trace between two unrelated nodes. In this way it's similar to the traveling salesman problem, where early…

> Pathfinding is a much easier problem than circuit routing and can essentially be solved in O(n + k) where n is the number of nodes and k is the number of edges between nodes.

What you are describing is the complexity for a single path. But there are lots of units that need to be placed and have their paths potentially interact to achieve some goal. This seems very analogous to circuit routing.

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