So, about a year ago I came across the "Defensive Walls" Doodad Pack in HotS. Basically, it's a set of walls with walkways on top, allowing defenders to stand on them. I thought it was a really cool concept, except it never got finished. The footprints didn't work on half of them and a bunch of them didn't have their collision boxes (instead of standing on them, you'd be in them). So I decided to fix it up into a useable mod pack! Along the way I added a really cool feature, which is that walls now work like cliffs. If you have a unit on top of a wall, your enemy can't shoot you unless they get high ground vision. Well it's finally done! The download link will be at the bottom of this post, as well as some explanation on how to use the mod. I present Defendable Walls!
First, a video showing the mod off:
Some explanation of some important attributes
Jumpable: There's a set of each doodad for jumpable and not jumpable. This controls if the footprint is unpathable or cliffs (whether or not reapers etc. can hop over the walls). It's advised to pick one and stick with it, since there's no visual way to show players which type a wall is.
Cliff Height: Each doodad has Cliff 1 or Cliff 2 (some have a mix between the numbers). This tells you which cliff level to put it on. 1 means cliff level 1, and the top of the wall acts like cliff level 2. 2 means put it on cliff level 2. Unfortunately due to the cliff restriction in the editor, you can't make the vision blocking aspect work when placed on the third cliff level, though I'm looking into doing a not-cliff version to remedy this. So make sure to get the number right, or you could end up like this:
Rotation: Footprints don't rotate properly, so I've made a separate doodad for every rotation type. There are a few cases where you can rotate a doodad and the footprint will be the same, but this is only with the straight pieces and rotation values of 180. In the following picture, the top row is rotatable; the bottom row (like most items in the mod) have different options for each possible rotation.
Mirrored: Certain orientations of some wall pieces aren't possible with just rotations. These cases are covered by "Mirrored" types, which are reflections of the doodad. Use conjuctions of mirrored and rotation to get all possible orientations.
Inner/Outer: Another important aspect of Defendable Walls is the "facing". Each model has a size that's supposed to be facing outwards, and another inwards (this is purely an aesthetic issue). Many of the doodads have an inner and outer version, allowing you to have the wall face 'outside' on either side.
Example Pieces (In some of these pictures the walls will look like a clump of garbage. The way to fix the collision boxes mentioned earlier involved layering other models with working collision boxes on top of the broken ones. In game they show up as invisible, but for some reason they are still visible in the editor)
It's strongly advised to turn pathing vision on while working with Defendable Walls, to make sure you've got everything set up properly!
There are two types of walls, 45 angle and 90 angle. The 45 angle are those which are 'isometric', going in diagonal directions. The 90 angle are the ones which are straight up and down or left and right.
Straight Pieces (These are the only ones that can be rotated)
Corner Pieces
45-90 Merge Pieces
Ramps
Cliff Merge Pieces (1 Cliff Level)
Cliff Merge Pieces (2 Cliff Levels)
Gates (These are actually units, so different players can control them
Things to do:
Currently there's only 45 degree versions of many of the pieces. Since 45 and 90 have different "connection" models, it's difficult to link them together. I'm working on solving this though!
Sometimes when close to a gate the enemy will have vision of the high ground, that needs to be fixed.
A version that doesn't worry about vision, if you just want to use the walls.
I'd love to have your feedback! Try it out, let me know what you think and what can be approved!
That is so awesome! Any possibility of making a unit version of the walls. I'm trying to think of a game that could be made with them.. like one where players can build the wall and/or attack the walls.
@Nurdguy: Go Watching the vid, it gave me a Helm's Deep-esque vibe for a map, with one side defending and having walls to put troops on while the other side is trying to break through.
Damn this is awesome! It looks you put a lot of time and effort in to making this mod perfect. It totally shows too, I'm really glad you did this because otherwise I would've had to and I doubt I would've made it a nice as yours. Is the mod on battle.net? If not it's not a big deal but for convenience of users it'd be awesome if you could. Anyway I will definitely keep an eye on this and will probably use this sometime soon.
So, about a year ago I came across the "Defensive Walls" Doodad Pack in HotS. Basically, it's a set of walls with walkways on top, allowing defenders to stand on them. I thought it was a really cool concept, except it never got finished. The footprints didn't work on half of them and a bunch of them didn't have their collision boxes (instead of standing on them, you'd be in them). So I decided to fix it up into a useable mod pack! Along the way I added a really cool feature, which is that walls now work like cliffs. If you have a unit on top of a wall, your enemy can't shoot you unless they get high ground vision. Well it's finally done! The download link will be at the bottom of this post, as well as some explanation on how to use the mod. I present Defendable Walls!
First, a video showing the mod off:
Some explanation of some important attributes
Jumpable: There's a set of each doodad for jumpable and not jumpable. This controls if the footprint is unpathable or cliffs (whether or not reapers etc. can hop over the walls). It's advised to pick one and stick with it, since there's no visual way to show players which type a wall is.
Cliff Height: Each doodad has Cliff 1 or Cliff 2 (some have a mix between the numbers). This tells you which cliff level to put it on. 1 means cliff level 1, and the top of the wall acts like cliff level 2. 2 means put it on cliff level 2. Unfortunately due to the cliff restriction in the editor, you can't make the vision blocking aspect work when placed on the third cliff level, though I'm looking into doing a not-cliff version to remedy this. So make sure to get the number right, or you could end up like this:
Rotation: Footprints don't rotate properly, so I've made a separate doodad for every rotation type. There are a few cases where you can rotate a doodad and the footprint will be the same, but this is only with the straight pieces and rotation values of 180. In the following picture, the top row is rotatable; the bottom row (like most items in the mod) have different options for each possible rotation.
Mirrored: Certain orientations of some wall pieces aren't possible with just rotations. These cases are covered by "Mirrored" types, which are reflections of the doodad. Use conjuctions of mirrored and rotation to get all possible orientations.
Inner/Outer: Another important aspect of Defendable Walls is the "facing". Each model has a size that's supposed to be facing outwards, and another inwards (this is purely an aesthetic issue). Many of the doodads have an inner and outer version, allowing you to have the wall face 'outside' on either side.
Example Pieces (In some of these pictures the walls will look like a clump of garbage. The way to fix the collision boxes mentioned earlier involved layering other models with working collision boxes on top of the broken ones. In game they show up as invisible, but for some reason they are still visible in the editor)
It's strongly advised to turn pathing vision on while working with Defendable Walls, to make sure you've got everything set up properly!
There are two types of walls, 45 angle and 90 angle. The 45 angle are those which are 'isometric', going in diagonal directions. The 90 angle are the ones which are straight up and down or left and right.
Straight Pieces (These are the only ones that can be rotated)
Corner Pieces
45-90 Merge Pieces
Ramps
Cliff Merge Pieces (1 Cliff Level)
Cliff Merge Pieces (2 Cliff Levels)
Gates (These are actually units, so different players can control them
Things to do:
I'd love to have your feedback! Try it out, let me know what you think and what can be approved!
Download: The mod is also available on Battlenet
That is so awesome! Any possibility of making a unit version of the walls. I'm trying to think of a game that could be made with them.. like one where players can build the wall and/or attack the walls.
Neat! Should be useful for a lotta things. ;)
@Nurdguy: Go Watching the vid, it gave me a Helm's Deep-esque vibe for a map, with one side defending and having walls to put troops on while the other side is trying to break through.
Damn this is awesome! It looks you put a lot of time and effort in to making this mod perfect. It totally shows too, I'm really glad you did this because otherwise I would've had to and I doubt I would've made it a nice as yours.
Is the mod on battle.net? If not it's not a big deal but for convenience of users it'd be awesome if you could.Anyway I will definitely keep an eye on this and will probably use this sometime soon.Edit: Missed the big bold words.