Triggers and recursive calling

[Xan_Kriegor]

As a fun sidetrack I decided to try making a trigger that would change surrounding terrain that would recursively call itself, eventually encompassing the entire area. What I got, however, was completely unexpected and sad. Using a testmap of entire one terrain I tried using this trigger:

• RecursiveTerrain
  • Events
  • Conditions
  • Actions
    • For each (Integer A) from 0 to 1, do (Actions)
      • Loop - Actions
        • Set Point2 = (Point offset by 128.00 towards (180.00 x (Real((Integer A)))) degrees)
        • If (All Conditions are True) then do (Then Actions) else do (Else Actions)
          • If - Conditions
            • (Terrain type at Point2) Equal to Lordaeron Summer - Rough Dirt
          • Then - Actions
            • Unit - Create 1 Footman for Player 1 (Red) at Point2 facing Default building facing degrees
            • Environment - Change terrain type at Point2 to Lordaeron Summer - Grass using variation 0 in an area of size 1 and shape Circle
            • Set Point = Point2
            • Trigger - Run RecursiveTerrain <gen> (ignoring conditions)
          • Else - Actions
            • Unit - Create 1 Footman for Player 2 (Blue) at Point2 facing Default building facing degrees
    • For each (Integer A) from 0 to 3, do (Actions)
      • Loop - Actions
        • Set Point2 = (Point offset by 181.00 towards (45.00 + (90.00 x (Real((Integer A))))) degrees)
        • If (All Conditions are True) then do (Then Actions) else do (Else Actions)
          • If - Conditions
            • (Terrain type at Point2) Equal to Lordaeron Summer - Rough Dirt
          • Then - Actions
            • Unit - Create 1 Footman for Player 1 (Red) at Point2 facing Default building facing degrees
            • Environment - Change terrain type at Point2 to Lordaeron Summer - Grass using variation 0 in an area of size 1 and shape Circle
            • Set Point = Point2
            • Trigger - Run RecursiveTerrain <gen> (ignoring conditions)
          • Else - Actions
            • Unit - Create 1 Footman for Player 2 (Blue) at Point2 facing Default building facing degrees

EDIT brief explanation of the trigger: in my map I'm trying to use this for I don't change terrain directly above or below the selection point which is why it looks a little funny. It searches to the left and right, and all diagonal spots.

What it appears to do is go straight to the left, then straight up until it hits the corner and stops (which is odd because it shouldn't even go up). This behavior isn't noticeable unless you make a box of nonstandard terrain, but the effect is the same either way.

The spawning of footmen is just an odd kind of errorchecking, showing where the trigger deems 'not suitable'. This has shown something curious however, which is that in the corner of the terrain box I made it spawns several hundred blue footmen at the end. This is somewhat perplexing as it shows the trigger is being triggered an absurd number of times. I thought that maybe it could be due to units being 'saved up' and it doesn't really make sense, but that's what it looks like. I made a small maze for the trigger to go through and it only spawned a few units in the beginning (less than it should have) and then a ton at the end (way more than it should). Using another trigger I found out the number of units generated 12 red footmen and 59 blue. There should be 6 blue for every red (so 72 blue), so there's another thing that's odd. And to add insult to injury, the maze wasn't even filled in properly even though it was properly shaped for the algorithm.


Anyway, longwinded explanation out of the way: attempting to use triggers recursively does not appear to work well (in GUI at least). Is there any way to alleviate this, or am I just out of luck? I feel like JASS probably has a better chance with it but I haven't learned JASS yet so I can't try it.

 

[Imp Midna]

Using Recursive functions is not a problem at all (well, O(n^6) is, but whatever), but the Integer A used for the Loops is a global variable so calling this trigger will most certainly not do what you want it to do. Use a local or magically break it down into a loop (which might be some kind of hard at this point)