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Another method that may not require scripting nearly as much. At the start of the game, put continously-detonating projectiles between the teams & at the games. They'd do enough damage to destroy any missiles that are flung through ... and any units that try to walk across. In other words, a force field of death.

When the siren goes, start a GEOM that finds them and gives them to an ambient invisible unit - this calls a CTRL that removes the artifact. If this is too unwieldy, try a bunch of other projectiles that start the game invisible, and detonate immediately when revealed with damage that'll destroy the barrier projectiles. With the siren you'd trigger an OBCO that reveals these projectiles, thus removing the barrier.

Interesting. Although if you look at the map starts you might think twice about the idea of "easier" - they're very irregular and close-quarters.

I might just give it a shot, although there is something VERY funny about this lightning from the sky that fries anyone jumping the gun - it's really quite hilarious. I had originally thought about having stone statues of Forest Giants that would come to life and just completely keek the offender's butt - thought that would be funny too: watching them run with nowhere to go as this thing rips them apart! Reminds me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail for some reason...

BTW, I just tried the circle of 24 radius and it seems to catch the attacks even less than "Entire Map". I think the GEOM is just not sensitive enough to pick up one Dorf attack every time. Dang, it's so annoying there isn't a TUNI for "is attacking" - that'd be so much simpler!

Oh well, I may just have to settle for: don't do it because odds are high the Wrath of Baak with nail you, and in a tourney we could either have a no tolerance policy and watch the films or have it so you *could* risk it and attack early if you really wanted to roll the dice. Could be interesting that way...

I wonder if there's a way to adjust that one force field thingy used in Dorfball - the green ball shield - such that it either hovers over each team (is a big tent shield) or I can flatten it out. Might have to see about that one too.

Final Update on this:

Ended up working the best for my case using "Entire Map" instead of the circles (this also covers the case of flying units such as Leggo Airships). It seemed to be as fast or faster for whatever reason.

Also using "never" as the action expiration and then killing it later seemed to work better than having the attack sequence re-activating the GEOM, probably because the GEOM would execute more often and have a greater chance of catching units in the act of attacking.

Alas, the Journeyman Healing *IS* considered an attack! Doh. This, like the Dwarf satchel drop are two nasties. I removed the satchels (and the attack) from those maps because it's more of a liability than an asset imo (and much easier and potentially more strategic). However I didn't want to remove the J-men, so... I had to make placeholders for the starting units w/o the J-men. A bit of a hassle, but it works well.


In conclusion, overall using the GEOM to check for attackers isn't 100% effective, and the fact that attacks such as the satchel drop and J-man healing are included is somewhat nasty (would be nice to have a list of "excluded attacks" somehow - using projectiles?). Really I'd prefer to have a TUNI that did the check with excluded attacks and then you could use a GEOM separately to determine where they are. Perhaps down the road...

Thanks for all the help and suggestions everyone! Was definitely a learning experience - I learned a LOT about how this little chunk of scripting works!

I also used Vinylrake's excellent archive of script tutorials on Mything.org - searched for "scripting" under Topics at the Myth Graveyard and found all this. Nice work VR!

In the geom that checks for attackers...

use all the units for the subject and also include an object monster identifier. Then use the "subtract monster list" flag...this will make it so only subjects in the subject list and NOT in the object are checked for by this geom...

Baak wrote:I also used Vinylrake's excellent archive of script tutorials on Mything.org - searched for "scripting" under Topics at the Myth Graveyard and found all this. Nice work VR!

I live to serve.

(glad you found something useful)

Wouldn't a much MUCH easier solution be to give all units an artifact that modifies their damage resistances to 0.0 (so they suffer no damage from anything ever) and then remove these artifacts once time is up?

It should also be far more robust provided it can be done properly as a batch-action (rather than one by one which will take time).

An artifact which causes a unit to attack themselves with lightning would be preferable, as you don't even have to find people trying to attack, but with different monsters it's not feasible.

Excellent idea, Haravikk (stashes this one in my toolbox!).

The problem with the situation on this map is that using a method other than "detect attack" means that people could simply attack like mad up until the siren sounds and thus do as much damage as possible once it does. It would be like a shark feeding frenzy!

Also people like to "sneak in" an attack just before the siren blows by launching something (RPG, Mondo Flareball, RD Fireball, Bushido Wizard Tornado (wrong name but that's the attack)) and then having the damage take effect post-siren.

I really wanted to have a "no one can attack until the siren blows", and it seems this is the only way to do it.

It actually works perfectly when it works, and works about 90% of the time, so people can still roll the dice and try and get an attack in - BUT, getting one attack in with the possibility of having a large chunk of your army blasted by the Wrath of Baak isn't worth it - thus is should be a sufficient deterrent.


Plus, it can be hilarious to watch!