Theory: The driving force behind the builder jump

UnknowVector

I come from the net ... My format, Vector.
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Hey all, its been a while since I posted, but regardless, I felt I should post this here.

You all probably know about the “builder jump” in which you build yourself into a corner, so you can “jump”. The idea is, your unit must land on a path able piece of land after building any building, even if this spot of land is somewhere you should not be able to reach, or does not touch your builders location. This trick has been around since Warcraft 2 (at least), and variations of it existed in Starcraft. You can use it to jump over walls, trees, or escape from enemies. It gets a lot of use in sheep tag, and a few elite, or just crazy, players use it in island defense.

This jump sometimes gives unpredictable results, but I did a little research into this to try and figure out what’s really going on. This screenshots were taken in island defense, single player. The examples have practical applications, epically for leaving bases quickly. To help duplicate these results, I suggest not letting your builder finish the structures, it works just the same, but its much faster to construct, and much easier to destroy if you build something wrong.

On the final image of this paragraph you can see my builder standing on a pillar of rock, on the other side of the screen you can see another pillar at the same cliff level, and in between, lots of ground of lower cliff levels. Here,
test1setupparttwocd3.th.jpg

and here
test1setuppi6.th.jpg

you see my set-up, it is necessary to block off the very top of the ramp, as it is counted as land able. And here
test1finalad2.th.jpg
,
you see my final position, when I fill in that bit of land I’m on with a shelter.

Here’s my theory, the pathing engine will seek out the nearest path able spot of land on the same cliff level as the original location. It counts at least the top part of ramps as the same cliff level.

If you stand to the far right side of that last piece of land in my 2nd picture the builder is NOT warped across, it will be stuck in an impossible spot, lodged inside the shelter. The engine seems to have a size limit, if it can’t find a path able spot on the same cliff level within a medium sized radius, it just sticks the builder in the building, making it quite impossible for the builder to move at all.

This has been duplicated in other spots on the map, here
my.php

you see my set-up and here
my.php

is my final location. Yes I believe you could indeed land in that little canyon, if you warped from the smallish indent with the trees at the bottom of the ramp.

As my last demonstration here
test3areapf7.th.jpg

is my starting area, and here
my.php

is my final position. You will notice the builder is stuck, the pathable land was too far away, yet there is pathable land on a lower cliff level not even 3 shelters away. The shelters go far back, the picture just doesn’t show them.

These are the only pictures I have, however, I have performed this test in many areas on many different maps. If you want to duplicate these results, or test my theory you should keep in mind that
1) You must block all pathable same-level land within a radius of your warp location equivalent to the distance from there to your target area
2) The target area must not be too far away (I would love for someone to count the real distance, I got pretty close on my first example)

Sorry for the pictures, they don’t display anything the way I need them to, but my field of vision for 1 screen is just too small. Anyway, thanks for reading.

EDIT: Actually, most the pictures don't display at all, sorry, imageshack is a horrid site.
 

Sooda

Diversity enchants
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I had in mind same idea what I am going to try use in my upcoming map. Idea is simple I place Tavern where all nearby land is blocked with pathing blockers so bought units will jump to my wanted place what is free. It is one part of my DotA style Hero buying mechanism.
 
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Hmm very interesting, gj. Im also a picture person and the pictures are to small to understand =P
 
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