SC2Mapster

Looking for someone to help me make abilities, I have all the buttons set up but i'm having trouble in making the ability do more damage as they level it up, as well as making auras better and making aoe damage type abilities if anyone could help me out i'd give them credit when the map is published!

To avoid needing to make effect chains for each level you can use trigger enhanced effects. The best example would be an ability where level 1 does 200 damage, 2 does 400 damage and 3 does 600 damage. You can simply run one effect chain where the actual damage effect comes from a trigger dealing (ability level * 200) damage. This can save a lot of work with multiple-level abilities.

@Precariosity: Go

from my point of view, upgrades are the best way to level abilities. Just get a Research ability, set up an upgrade to increase the damage of the the effect. now link them on the hero. and this is way faster than having a new efffect chain for each new lvl. now you need one trigger to track the Skill points. everytime you research one upgrade remove on skill point. if there is no skil point left, set a dummy upgrade to disable the Learn submenu on the hero. it's also important to have values like dmg linked inside the button instead of having a static text.
(you can remove a point by actually learning one lvl of your ability with issue order trigger, therefore you need to have the cost array have 1 entriy for each lvl)

@FunkyUserName: Go

Agreed, I'm using a similar method in my map, abilities are learned normally and an upgrade level is added when the level is >1. That way you don't need to workaround skillpoints or have 2 abilities (but it does need a lot more setting up and triggerwork. Making a list of abilities, checking if they're part of it when learned, having a trigger/action to set them up, etc). Though, any method other than the standard one would work much better and be less tedious.

Keep in mind that behaviors are bugged with upgrades. If your behavior grants +200 life, and you upgrade it to +300 life, ALL behaviors will be refreshed which often means that a unit will suddenly jump back to full life. This is gamebreaking in many cases.

Note that it doesn't matter what you upgrade about the behavior. If you have, say, a +1 armor aura, and upgrade it to +2 armor, it will still make any units with a life bonus behavior suddenly jump to full hp.

Auras are generally best done by making a separate aura for each ability level. It can be time-consuming, but you avoid the above bug.

Another way to avoid the bug would be storing the unit's vital percents in variables, applying the upgrade, then setting the unit's vitals to the stored percents.

Though, this will only work on the unit learning the ability, for things like auras you'd need to pick every unit with that behavior on too.

Upgrades also affect all units owned by a player so the results are only MPI. As such if the player owns two of the same hero it will bug quite badly.