I'm making a new map, roughly based upon wc3's Dark Alliance. Anyways I'm having huge issues with giving heroes abilities. I haven't been able to get started at all on the hero section (I'm about 25% completed as is, map is playable though its only tier 1 units spawning). I'm becoming very frustrated with the whole process.
First things first, I need to know how to make an ability like Raynor's Railgun except I need 3 levelable tiers of the ability. I already know how to give the hero the "Learn" ability and vetrancy so there's no problems there. My main concern is creating these abilities and actually getting my map fired up the way I want it to be.
I already did a search for this and didn't find anything (maybe I wasn't looking hard enough?) and I'll defininately check out that template. Thanks, I'll write back if I get this mess figured out.
Edit: I didn't find anything. Maybe I don't know what I'm looking for? Could you please post up a link or something so I know where to find this stuff?
This stuff is ridiculously complicated with the actors and ability bugs. I'm just going to hold off on the heroes until the very end. However, if any of you know how to do this and would like to help me, I would greatly appreciate it.
Yes, exactly. Just my problem is that I don't understand exactly how to create a custom ability with actors and everything. Sure I can copy what's-his-face's video and create a stim with increasing duration... that's not difficult. Creating an actual firing ability and having it's effects and everything go off perfectly - well, that's out of my league right now and I don't think that it'll get any easier without someone to help me. It's a little disheartening to be honest.
Use Tier 1
Use
- Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 1> Completed
Show
- And
- - Not
- - - Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 2> Completed
- - Not
- - - Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 3> Completed
Tier 2
Use
- Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 2> Completed
Show
- And
- - Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 2> Completed
- - Not
- - - Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 3> Completed
Tier 3
Use
- Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 3> Completed
Show
- Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 3> Completed
4. [Suffix] - Setup your abilities / behaviors / effects (In your case, I don't copy the original ability, I add a new object in ability, behavior and effect and just duplicate all the field values. I find copying creates a lot of unnecessary copies throughout the editor)
5. We need to determine what kind of Actor Events we need to add by figuring out what you want your actors to do when the ability is used
My problem is the actors and effects of abilities... I'm sorry if it feels like I'm running you in a loop.
Here's a perfect example: I'm trying to get an ultimate ability of one of my heroes to drop an asteroid and cause AoE damage. I have absolutely no idea how to set up any of it. I would like my cursor to change to one of the AoE splats like the AoE spells already available in the game and then I would like an asteroid to drop on that location, say two seconds, after causing AoE damage of 150 in the target area with, say, four range. The damage would only affect ground units (heroes and normal) and not buildings.
When I tried to create this spell all I got was it killed everything in an indistinguishable range. There was no asteroid dropping (though I was sure I had the actor set up properly), the damage didn't work at all (it dealt a lot of damage to everything, instantly killing it) and none of the eye dazzling effects worked either.
Sorry again if this feels like I'm asking too much. If I could only get a template and and explaination of how these things worked I wouldn't have this problem. However, no one seems to have a video or anything available that teaches how to make these more complicated abilities (though I've seen plenty showing off some very impressive abilities). If you know how, would you mind giving me a step by step (as detailed as possible) tutorial of how to do this? Like I said, once I have a template and some experience I won't have this problem anymore.
If you do know how, thank you so much. If you don't, thank you anyways for everything you've offered thus far =)
You need to learn how to create a single ability first, forget about levels until you can understand that. Once you understand effects and actors, levelable abilities are very easy to do.
The best way to learn in my opinion is setup a test map and play with existing abilities, change some values and see how everything links in.
Here are the basics to get you started:
It all starts with an ability data object. These can be Instant, Targetable or other.
The first link is the effect. You tell the abiliity which effect to call when it is used via the Effect - Effect field.
You can pretty much ignore actors for now, in most cases they are used to add sounds, models/visuals to your ability (sometimes they do more).
There are heaps of different types of effects as well, that each do different things. Some call other effects, some apply a behavior etc.
Okay so lets assume you have an ability setup, the effects work and cause damage or whatever, but you don't see anything when it is cast. This is where actors come in.
Actors kind of 'reverse link' to things.
One actor can be used for multiple abilities in most cases
To link an actor to an ability, you edit the actors Events field. All you are really doing here is setting up triggers for the actor. You choose the event and the action that will be taken when the event occurs.
The most complicated part of actors in my opion, is the host locations. Even if you have everything else setup correctly, this one field can cause it not to work, cause the sound not to play or the model/beam not to show.
Hopefully this helps a little, you need to spend some time just understanding how everything links together. Once you wrap your head around it you will realize that it's not actually that complex - it just has a steep learning curve.
Once you understand how actors/effects all link in, there is still more to learn, but in most cases you can use existing spells as reference and see how they work. I started by duplicating existing abilities that were similar to what I wanted to create, but once you get the hang of it you can create them from scratch (although I still duplicate as it's quicker).
Haha alright, well I know exactly what I'll be doing for the next couple weeks. Thanks for your input - it was invaluable. As for the steep learning curve, I tend to be on that side, but hopefully I don't slip and fall flat on my face. Again, thank you.
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I'm making a new map, roughly based upon wc3's Dark Alliance. Anyways I'm having huge issues with giving heroes abilities. I haven't been able to get started at all on the hero section (I'm about 25% completed as is, map is playable though its only tier 1 units spawning). I'm becoming very frustrated with the whole process.
First things first, I need to know how to make an ability like Raynor's Railgun except I need 3 levelable tiers of the ability. I already know how to give the hero the "Learn" ability and vetrancy so there's no problems there. My main concern is creating these abilities and actually getting my map fired up the way I want it to be.
Thx =)
@Steel1270: Go
There's a hero template map on mapster somewhere that has a hero setup just like a War3 unit. You should download it and see how they did it.
@Steel1270: Go
Plenty of tutorials on that sort of thing. Search is that way
->I already did a search for this and didn't find anything (maybe I wasn't looking hard enough?) and I'll defininately check out that template. Thanks, I'll write back if I get this mess figured out.
Edit: I didn't find anything. Maybe I don't know what I'm looking for? Could you please post up a link or something so I know where to find this stuff?
This stuff is ridiculously complicated with the actors and ability bugs. I'm just going to hold off on the heroes until the very end. However, if any of you know how to do this and would like to help me, I would greatly appreciate it.
Are you trying to achieve something like the following:
Ability
Tier 1: Does stuff
Tier 2: Does more stuff
Tier 3: Does even more stuff
@Zurom: Go
Yes, exactly. Just my problem is that I don't understand exactly how to create a custom ability with actors and everything. Sure I can copy what's-his-face's video and create a stim with increasing duration... that's not difficult. Creating an actual firing ability and having it's effects and everything go off perfectly - well, that's out of my league right now and I don't think that it'll get any easier without someone to help me. It's a little disheartening to be honest.
I've done this plenty on my current map.
This is the process I do:
NOTE: "[Suffix]" = Add a suffix that has the tier number. Example: "(Tier 3)"
1. [Suffix] Create 3 custom buttons with their icons (if applicable)
2. Setup 3 separate upgrades. (Type = Spell Research)
3. Setup 3 Requirements for "Learn" and "Use"
Learn
Tier 1
Use
Show
- Equals
- - Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 1> Queued or Better
- - Constant = 0
Tier 2
Use
- Equals (Tooltip = "<Ability Name> Tier 1")
- - Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 1> Completed
- - Constant = 1
Show
- Equals
- - Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 2> Queued or Better
- - Constant = 0
Tier 3
Use
- Equals (Tooltip = "<Ability Name> Tier 2")
- - Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 2> Completed
- - Constant = 1
Show
- Equals
- - Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 3> Queued or Better
- - Constant = 0
Use
Tier 1
Use
- Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 1> Completed
Show
- And
- - Not
- - - Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 2> Completed
- - Not
- - - Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 3> Completed
Tier 2
Use
- Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 2> Completed
Show
- And
- - Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 2> Completed
- - Not
- - - Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 3> Completed
Tier 3
Use
- Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 3> Completed
Show
- Count Upgrade <Upgrade Tier 3> Completed
4. [Suffix] - Setup your abilities / behaviors / effects (In your case, I don't copy the original ability, I add a new object in ability, behavior and effect and just duplicate all the field values. I find copying creates a lot of unnecessary copies throughout the editor)
5. We need to determine what kind of Actor Events we need to add by figuring out what you want your actors to do when the ability is used
My problem is the actors and effects of abilities... I'm sorry if it feels like I'm running you in a loop.
Here's a perfect example: I'm trying to get an ultimate ability of one of my heroes to drop an asteroid and cause AoE damage. I have absolutely no idea how to set up any of it. I would like my cursor to change to one of the AoE splats like the AoE spells already available in the game and then I would like an asteroid to drop on that location, say two seconds, after causing AoE damage of 150 in the target area with, say, four range. The damage would only affect ground units (heroes and normal) and not buildings.
When I tried to create this spell all I got was it killed everything in an indistinguishable range. There was no asteroid dropping (though I was sure I had the actor set up properly), the damage didn't work at all (it dealt a lot of damage to everything, instantly killing it) and none of the eye dazzling effects worked either.
Sorry again if this feels like I'm asking too much. If I could only get a template and and explaination of how these things worked I wouldn't have this problem. However, no one seems to have a video or anything available that teaches how to make these more complicated abilities (though I've seen plenty showing off some very impressive abilities). If you know how, would you mind giving me a step by step (as detailed as possible) tutorial of how to do this? Like I said, once I have a template and some experience I won't have this problem anymore.
If you do know how, thank you so much. If you don't, thank you anyways for everything you've offered thus far =)
You need to learn how to create a single ability first, forget about levels until you can understand that. Once you understand effects and actors, levelable abilities are very easy to do.
The best way to learn in my opinion is setup a test map and play with existing abilities, change some values and see how everything links in.
Here are the basics to get you started:
You can pretty much ignore actors for now, in most cases they are used to add sounds, models/visuals to your ability (sometimes they do more).
Okay so lets assume you have an ability setup, the effects work and cause damage or whatever, but you don't see anything when it is cast. This is where actors come in.
The most complicated part of actors in my opion, is the host locations. Even if you have everything else setup correctly, this one field can cause it not to work, cause the sound not to play or the model/beam not to show.
Hopefully this helps a little, you need to spend some time just understanding how everything links together. Once you wrap your head around it you will realize that it's not actually that complex - it just has a steep learning curve.
Once you understand how actors/effects all link in, there is still more to learn, but in most cases you can use existing spells as reference and see how they work. I started by duplicating existing abilities that were similar to what I wanted to create, but once you get the hang of it you can create them from scratch (although I still duplicate as it's quicker).
Haha alright, well I know exactly what I'll be doing for the next couple weeks. Thanks for your input - it was invaluable. As for the steep learning curve, I tend to be on that side, but hopefully I don't slip and fall flat on my face. Again, thank you.