Hi, I'm IskatuMesk. In my previous guide I showed you how to utilize the basic utilities involved in Starcraft modding. Now I'm going to show you a few intermediate techniques using those existing programs. In this guide I will introduce you to the concept of randomized sequence attacks, like those I use in Armageddon Onslaught.

Sequenced Attacks

Death Counts are the variables of StarCraft. There is an almost endless supply of them and they allow you to perform many advanced map making techniques, a good map almost always has Death Counts and this tutorial will show you how to use them.

It is possible to do basic mathematical operations with triggers. Refer to the map Binary Calculator for an example of add, subtract, multiply, and divide.

Binary Countoffs can be used to speed up these calculations.

Addition

Adding two counters is fairly simple. All you need to do is subtract from one counter while adding to the other.

Binary

It is important to know how the binary, or base 2, number system works. You can learn about binary in-depth from the Wikipedia article. The reason for knowing how binay works is to help you understand how this trigger system works.

Binary Countoff

A binary countoff is used to move the value of one counter to another counter with as few triggers as possible.

A string in Starcraft map making can be defined as a string of characters, numbers, and symbols.
"Hello" (without quotes) can be recognized as a string.

Many things in a StarCraft map take up strings.
These things include:

• Map title and description
  
• Force titles
  
• Locations (named or unnamed)
  
• Custom switch names
  
• Custom unit names
  
• Display Text trigger actions
  
• Trigger comments
  
• WAV sound paths

Hyper triggers are triggers that utilize Wait actions to speed up the check rate of triggers at up to 8.0 times per "game-time" second, or 11.9 times in real-time seconds (fastest game speed with wait(0); actions).

Normally the trigger cycle only occurs once every two seconds, but when a Wait action "waits" the trigger cycle repeats prematurely. A hyper trigger is simply a collection of waits that are constantly activating, making the trigger cycle occur as fast as Starcraft will allow, or however fast the mapmaker chooses.

Games often need to make use of random numbers. Use one of the methods described below if your map requires randomization.

Switch Methods

Switches have two states, CLEAR (0) and SET (1).
Switch randomization is a built-in function of the Set Switch trigger action.