[an error occurred while processing this directive]The Gallantry [an error occurred while processing this directive]

The Gallantry

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The Gallantry
Design Journal Entry #2

Mapping Madness

One of the trickiest aspects of map making is the transmission triggers. They are the key to conveying the plot of the map to the player. However, there are many considerations to ponder when writing a transmission trigger.

The first is how much interaction you want the player to have during the transmission. If you really want to force the player to listen to the transmission, your best friend is the Pause Game trigger. It will completely lock up the game, including the cursor, disallowing any and all actions in the game but the transmission to occur. However, this is unpractical if you wish to have some degree of movement during the transmission. For instance, make a unit move to a certain location, and then continue speaking. In Pause mode, you cannot do that. You would need to pause and unpause repeatedly, and that would get really annoying.

So your second option is just to go on with the transmission. The big problem with that is that if the player controls the units interacting in the transmission, he may do all sorts of funky things with them, like kill them. That would not look so good. So what is the best compromise? Well different teams of course! What is usually done is this: when a transmission is to occur, the units that are going to interact are given to a neutral computer. Then, the transmission can be done safely as the player lost control of these critical units. Once the transmission is over, you give the units back to their original owner. The Give Unit trigger, introduced in Brood War, allows the very effective way of doing the transmissions.

The second consideration is the time. This is just a minor one, but you have to make sure the transmission time is the same as the length of the WAV file you are going to use. I also usually put a 500 milliseconds Wait action after each transmission to give the dialog a seemingly normal pace.

Finally, the most boring thing to watch for is text formatting. I try to uphold Blizzard’s text formatting by indenting the text 15 characters each line, and only 10 for the speaker’s name. Also, a good tip is to put two blank lines at the end of each transmission so that the next one is automatically separated from the previous one.

-BahamutZERO

On the steps of a Khalai Temple: Believing death to be certain,
Protoss warriors perform the Word of Tomovor, a ritual prayer
bestowing supernatural powers upon those doomed to die in battle.

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