Been trying to build an ability for a while but without much success, so I was hoping someone could instruct me how to do.
The ability I'm trying to make is similar to Battle Cruiser's missle pods, but with a bigger effect area and missles moving from a Hellion's cannon to the ground. The Hellion should not move until all the missles have been fired from the cannon. The damage that every missle deals should be very low, but with a good bonus versus non biological units (like tanks, goliaths, etc.) and versus structures/buildings. That would be nice to add also tree fire to the effect.
I duped the missle pods ability and tried to mess a little bit around with it, but I can't find the right way to do what I'm looking for.
Well Im fairly decent with this kind of stuff but its not easy to explain without going into details.So instead I thought yoou might try making the missile of the weapon to white napalm or some other form of napalm missile.I believe Napalm is strong against structures and other units,not sure about the tanks or goliaths. I'll try to come up with something easy to explain but for now you can try doing this for the effect,also set Turret to non rotating while firing.Thats all i got for now but Like i said I will try to come up with something unless someone else answers your question first.Anyway good luck with your map and I hope this helps out a little bit.
Live long and, prosper.
Tony Fox
Creator of Project Avatar.
Thank you for the reply!
Well, working again and again... I came to something closer. But it's still bugged.
1) First of all, I think that the dupe process (I duped all the effects and actors) messed up something: the explosions' delay no longer works even if it's linked properly. As soon as I fire the ability, I see the explosions well before the impacts and then missles start to come out from the Hellion... -_-
2) I don't know how to make the Hellion's turret face the location targeted by ability's cursor, and then block its movement until the ability is finished.
3) I don't know which site operator to use. I've tried with SOpHeightLaunch, HellionAttackDamageSiteOpForward and HellionBuildingBurnerAttackDamageSiteOpForward with no luck. I can't find the Hellion's turret site operator so missles start to come out from the bottom of it.
4) How can I add the tree burn thing?
The ground to ground problem (missles on the original ability go up in the air) has been resolved by the dupe. After duping the ability... well... I don't know why but they are targeting ground now...
Many attacks use independent 'action' actors that create a lot of the visuals and other things involved in them, I noticed this is something *alot* of the terran units use and its unfortunately annoying in that they are rarely found directly in the effects chains or the links fields in the data editor for the rest of the assets involved in a weapon's attack or ability. Look for one that might be associated with the battlecruiser's pod attack and if it exists that's likely the thing that controls more of that particular effect.
Btw turrets and abilities are heinously annoying to try and sync, I'd just as soon recommend you forget that particular aspect for now. I have a system that sorta works to tie them together but it is very hackish and basically involving neutering the unit's real weapon in favour of pretending to be the ability's weapon just so the turret will move as I want. The bone you want to rotate btw would be turretZ but unfortunately the turret actor owns it and the engine won't let you edit that bone's rotation manually without severing the turret from the rest of the unit model, its really a lost cause at this point until blizzard gives us a hand in understanding or exposing more of the turret controlling functions of the engine.
Yeah, I was thinking about an unreferenced actor controlling missiles direction and impact location... but for the moment I had no luck. If it is "hidden", it's really well hidden. Damn.
For what concerns the turret... ok, there is no way to control the bone. But so, the turret's rotation obtained with normal attacks is hardcoded?
Far as anyone's found yah when you make a turret actor it pretty much owns that bone and won't let anything adjust it, if you don't make a turret actor and try to manipulate that bone it'll work...but it'll disconnect everything from the actor attached to that bone which is equally frustrating since you can't really tie them together again, at least as far as anyone's worked out that is.
I haven't tried this *exactly*, but I have a pretty good handle on the data editor...really need to get around to posting some units at some point...
Aaanyways, I seriously recommend that you never dupe abilties. It's good to look at them to get an idea for how things fit together, but duping may result in some unexpected behavior.
Having said that, here's how I would do this. As a general rule, try and break it down into smaller chunks. If you approach it from "I want an ability that does this," then you may have a great final concept, but not a good starting point.
So let's look at it this way. You want to fire a bunch of missiles. Let's start with one missile.
You'll need a Damage Effect for the missile. Then you'll need a Launch Effect and then the corresponding actors to put them together. Basically, are you able to make a simple projectile ranged attack?
Obviously, tweak the values in your damage effect to allow for splash/damage bonus, etc.
Okay, so you have a missile attack. Now you want a LOT of them. Fair enough. Make a Persistent Effect that fires as many as you'd like. (Adjust number of periods, only periodic effect needs to be the Launch Effect. Feel free to randomize period duration or what not.)
Now if you attach this effect to a weapon, you'll notice that you're firing all the missiles at the target and dealing damage equivalent to the number of missiles that you fired.
Not what you want, I know. But that's okay, we're CLOSE. Go back to your Launch Effect and make sure that the "Impact Effect" Field is set to "Target Unit/Point." This is very important.
That by itself won't change anything though, you need the missiles to strike randomly. No problem, go back to your Persistent Effect and add the Flag "Random Offset." Now go into your "Periodic Offsets" Field and enter your offsets. I typically use the center point (0,0), and then 12 points on a circle of radius (whatever).
Here's a cheat sheet, your points should be as follows for my setup:
That's for a circle of radius 1. If you want to scale it up, just multiply each value by your spread radius (Ex: 1.3,0.75 for a 1.5 radius circle).
Now the turret thing I'm not 100% sure about. However, here's a thought:
Look at the Hellion's Attack actor, and check the Launch Attachment field. Copy that Launch Attachment and put it in the Actor for your Launch Effect. I've used a similar trick before with the Battlecruiser.
I'm in the process of doing something similar. I'll let you know how it turns out, but give this a go. :)
Been trying to build an ability for a while but without much success, so I was hoping someone could instruct me how to do.
The ability I'm trying to make is similar to Battle Cruiser's missle pods, but with a bigger effect area and missles moving from a Hellion's cannon to the ground. The Hellion should not move until all the missles have been fired from the cannon. The damage that every missle deals should be very low, but with a good bonus versus non biological units (like tanks, goliaths, etc.) and versus structures/buildings. That would be nice to add also tree fire to the effect.
I duped the missle pods ability and tried to mess a little bit around with it, but I can't find the right way to do what I'm looking for.
Well Im fairly decent with this kind of stuff but its not easy to explain without going into details.So instead I thought yoou might try making the missile of the weapon to white napalm or some other form of napalm missile.I believe Napalm is strong against structures and other units,not sure about the tanks or goliaths. I'll try to come up with something easy to explain but for now you can try doing this for the effect,also set Turret to non rotating while firing.Thats all i got for now but Like i said I will try to come up with something unless someone else answers your question first.Anyway good luck with your map and I hope this helps out a little bit. Live long and, prosper. Tony Fox Creator of Project Avatar.
Thank you for the reply!
Well, working again and again... I came to something closer. But it's still bugged.
1) First of all, I think that the dupe process (I duped all the effects and actors) messed up something: the explosions' delay no longer works even if it's linked properly. As soon as I fire the ability, I see the explosions well before the impacts and then missles start to come out from the Hellion... -_-
2) I don't know how to make the Hellion's turret face the location targeted by ability's cursor, and then block its movement until the ability is finished.
3) I don't know which site operator to use. I've tried with SOpHeightLaunch, HellionAttackDamageSiteOpForward and HellionBuildingBurnerAttackDamageSiteOpForward with no luck. I can't find the Hellion's turret site operator so missles start to come out from the bottom of it.
4) How can I add the tree burn thing?
The ground to ground problem (missles on the original ability go up in the air) has been resolved by the dupe. After duping the ability... well... I don't know why but they are targeting ground now...
Many attacks use independent 'action' actors that create a lot of the visuals and other things involved in them, I noticed this is something *alot* of the terran units use and its unfortunately annoying in that they are rarely found directly in the effects chains or the links fields in the data editor for the rest of the assets involved in a weapon's attack or ability. Look for one that might be associated with the battlecruiser's pod attack and if it exists that's likely the thing that controls more of that particular effect.
Btw turrets and abilities are heinously annoying to try and sync, I'd just as soon recommend you forget that particular aspect for now. I have a system that sorta works to tie them together but it is very hackish and basically involving neutering the unit's real weapon in favour of pretending to be the ability's weapon just so the turret will move as I want. The bone you want to rotate btw would be turretZ but unfortunately the turret actor owns it and the engine won't let you edit that bone's rotation manually without severing the turret from the rest of the unit model, its really a lost cause at this point until blizzard gives us a hand in understanding or exposing more of the turret controlling functions of the engine.
Yeah, I was thinking about an unreferenced actor controlling missiles direction and impact location... but for the moment I had no luck. If it is "hidden", it's really well hidden. Damn.
For what concerns the turret... ok, there is no way to control the bone. But so, the turret's rotation obtained with normal attacks is hardcoded?
@DivinoZarathos: Go
Far as anyone's found yah when you make a turret actor it pretty much owns that bone and won't let anything adjust it, if you don't make a turret actor and try to manipulate that bone it'll work...but it'll disconnect everything from the actor attached to that bone which is equally frustrating since you can't really tie them together again, at least as far as anyone's worked out that is.
Bump!
Still badly stuck... does anyone had it corretly duped?
Bump
I haven't tried this *exactly*, but I have a pretty good handle on the data editor...really need to get around to posting some units at some point...
Aaanyways, I seriously recommend that you never dupe abilties. It's good to look at them to get an idea for how things fit together, but duping may result in some unexpected behavior.
Having said that, here's how I would do this. As a general rule, try and break it down into smaller chunks. If you approach it from "I want an ability that does this," then you may have a great final concept, but not a good starting point.
So let's look at it this way. You want to fire a bunch of missiles. Let's start with one missile.
You'll need a Damage Effect for the missile. Then you'll need a Launch Effect and then the corresponding actors to put them together. Basically, are you able to make a simple projectile ranged attack?
Obviously, tweak the values in your damage effect to allow for splash/damage bonus, etc.
Okay, so you have a missile attack. Now you want a LOT of them. Fair enough. Make a Persistent Effect that fires as many as you'd like. (Adjust number of periods, only periodic effect needs to be the Launch Effect. Feel free to randomize period duration or what not.)
Now if you attach this effect to a weapon, you'll notice that you're firing all the missiles at the target and dealing damage equivalent to the number of missiles that you fired.
Not what you want, I know. But that's okay, we're CLOSE. Go back to your Launch Effect and make sure that the "Impact Effect" Field is set to "Target Unit/Point." This is very important.
That by itself won't change anything though, you need the missiles to strike randomly. No problem, go back to your Persistent Effect and add the Flag "Random Offset." Now go into your "Periodic Offsets" Field and enter your offsets. I typically use the center point (0,0), and then 12 points on a circle of radius (whatever).
Here's a cheat sheet, your points should be as follows for my setup:
0,0
1,0
0.866,0.5
0.5,0.866
0,1
-0.5,0.866
-0.866,0.5
-1,0
-0.866,-0.5
-0.5,-0.866
0,-1
0.5,-0.866
0.866,-0.5
That's for a circle of radius 1. If you want to scale it up, just multiply each value by your spread radius (Ex: 1.3,0.75 for a 1.5 radius circle).
Now the turret thing I'm not 100% sure about. However, here's a thought:
Look at the Hellion's Attack actor, and check the Launch Attachment field. Copy that Launch Attachment and put it in the Actor for your Launch Effect. I've used a similar trick before with the Battlecruiser.
I'm in the process of doing something similar. I'll let you know how it turns out, but give this a go. :)
EDIT: Yes, this just worked.
Thank you very very very mych for this kind reply ^^
I'll try and let you know!