SC2Mapster

What I'm trying to accomplish: I have a custom turret that has a duplicate of the diamondback's weapon. I want three beams to appear in a line and hit the target.

I've managed to get a beam's starting position to move using a local offset site operation in launch site ops, and that seems to work perfectly well. The problem is that I have three different beam actors, two of which have site ops on them (left and right), but only one beam (the left one) appears!

The only difference between the actors is the launch site ops field. Everything else, including the event list, is the same. There's a lot to go through to figure out what is causing this, and I've been doing so for the past three hours to no avail, so I figured asking here might be a good idea. I hope I'm just missing something.

Cheers, Alex

edit: It's the action actors I have three of, all using the same beam actor. I tried making different beam actors too, but it didn't seem to make any difference.

One damage effect only supports one action actor. So you would either need to use 3 damage effects or 2 beam actors which are not created by the action.

@Kueken531: Go

Okay, that kind of makes sense.

I just tried putting a second damage effect (with no damage) in the set, and linking one of the beams to it. Now no beams appear. Any idea?

Alternatively, how would I go about having separate beam actors without creating them with an action? Sorry if that sounds stupid, but I'm more of a trigger than data guy to be honest and have barely even touched beams before.

Don't worry about it. Beams are actually not that intuitive to work with, even people versed in data sometimes struggle using them.

As to your first problem, I could only guess without any further information. Multiple damage effects, action actors and associated beams shouldn't affect each other when set up correctly. I would assume, it is an issue with your setup.

Creating a beam independent of an action is not that hard, at least if you have accessible reference points (caster and target unit for example). I am not sure, how exactly your action actor works, but you probably want your beams to be synchronized with the launch and impact of the action actor? Action actors usually pick a randomized impact attachment point at the target unit, and multiple action actors would potentially select different ones, which might look weird.

I would do this syncing by utilizing the _LaunchGuide and _ImpactGuide aliases used by the action actor. Just by attaching the beams to these aliases, you make sure, they are aligned. To do this, use a Simple beam actor and set the Host Launch and Host Impact fields to LaunchGuide and ImpactGuide respectively. Then use the Events to create the beams on the same effect, that is used for the action actor. Add your site operations, and you are good to go.

Attached an example map. "Beam" is used as a beam for the marine weapon's action actor, while "Beam Left" and "Beam Right" are created individually by the same effect and synced to the action actor using the described method.

@Kueken531: Go

Sorry, I totally forgot to reply, but this post solved all of my problems, and the launch/impactguide related stuff was going to be my next question, so nice prediction :)