SC2Mapster

Have you tried just giving the items themselves weapons? I'm curious how it'd play out. Of course, they'd need an attack ability, and the weapon flags modified.

Items are effectively invisible units that are attached to the host, so it might work.

As mentioned in an earlier post, setting the Weapon:Acquire Target Sorts - Sorts to TSRandom seemed to allow all the weapons to fire while the unit was standing still. What exactly does Acquire Target Sorts do?

@Freddy2287: Go The map of yours that I played was Desert Tankbattle BETA. I have a quick question which might be somewhat off topic but still related: How did you create your weapon upgrade system?

The way you had it set up is that you would need two of an item, let's say item A, and a shop where you could combine them into item B. Combining them would remove both items from the inventory and replace them with one item B. What did you do to accomplish that?

Also when you meant using two or more of the same item, did you mean stacking? There is probably a way to do it with validators but I am not sure.

:-D Oh okay.. thought I could get some new inspirations :-D

• Upgrading/Combining system is driven by triggers and dummy units, so "upgrading" in fact creates an invisible dummy unit, that fires a trigger ("any unit created with ability..."). In this trigger the inventory is checked and eventually the new item is created (or an error is displayed).
• yes, if you are planning a battleships remake I guess you also want to be able to have more than one weapon of the same type, dont you? As I said, when I started developing my map, there was only a quite odd workaround with the need to have X different weapons (in data editor) of the same type, because a unit could only have one weapon of the same type. This was used in Catalyst Citiescape (if you know this map - it was quite brilliant, at least with its presentation).

@Freddy2287: Go

Since our maps share some concepts, we could do something like swap ideas or methods on how to make similar things work and some some data/trigger stuff.

I did run into the issue of not being able to stack items but I really didn't look into it too too much. Could you please explain in more detail or provide an example of one item upgrade trigger/dummy as you mentioned?

I play on the North American servers and my battletag is stormahawk#1947 if you want to add me and test maps sometime.

Hey I have a similar problem.

I made a unit that has 12 weapons and turrets and it only fires 1 at an enemy. For example there can be 6 Zerglings in range but it will fire one weapon at each Zergling, meaning 6 are firing and 6 are idle.

If there is 1 Thor I'd like it to fire all weapons at the Thor.

Furthermore (it's an air unit) if there is 1 Stalker and 6 Zerglings it will only fire 1 weapon at the stalker instead of 1 at the Stalker and 6 at each Zergling.

Any ideas so it will actually fire all weapons?

The TSRandom thing looks promising but I don't even know what that does.

@RuneKatashima: Go

If it's the same weapon times 12, weapons do not stack without an annoying workaround. Are your weapons the same weapon or different weapons?

They're different weapons.

If you're curious what I did with Catalyst: Cityscape (as mentioned above), I just made 6 of every weapon and used triggers to apply them based on what items the hero had.

Another idea I had during development of that map, was to just use catalogs to adjust the firing rate. 1 "Weapon X" = normal firing rate. 2 "Weapon X" = double firing rate, and so on. This would be extremely simple to code for.

Lastly, if I were to remake the map now, I'd attach a persistent to every weapon and use catalog values to add or remove extra shots to from each weapon. This would probably be visually the cleanest method.

Just random thoughts. No clue if any of it is helpful.

@TyaStarcraft: GoOh you programmed Cityscape? Good job :) And thx for the inspiration for "dropping" landers. :) The map was a bit to trigger and double-data heavy for my taste but really great over all. I have not worked with catalogs until now - whats the benefit? Could you give an example or know a good tutorial?

@Stormahawk: GoOf course - if there is something we could help each other out with, why not. Whats your main profession in mapping? Short explanation on the weapon system: behaviour -> periodic search effect -> launch/damage effect. This method has pros and cons. Its completely data-driven but works not as "original" weapons, so e.g. the effect searches in fix intervalls for targets, no matter if there is an enemy or not so it could lead to some odd behaviour when the period is quite long.

@Freddy2287: Go

Catalogs can do anything that an upgrade can do, without having to use an upgrade. So long as you're controlling them with triggers.

They also accept functions. You can, say, set a unit's weapon speed to be 20% faster than another unit's weapon speed. You just could not do that with upgrades. Or set a unit's collision radius to be equal to however many stacks of "growth" behavior it has.

They come with the downside of needing to be controlled via triggers.

@TyaStarcraft: GoSounds great. A last question regarding catalogs: As far as I understand, its the case that every player has its own catalog. And values edited (eg the damage of a damage effect) is changed for this player and for all his units that use this specific effect. So its like I change the effect in the data editor but only applied for one player and only for one game!? But this way it is not possible to change e.g. the period of a behaviour for just a single unit!?

@Freddy2287: Go

My main profession in mapping is data. I am okay at triggers although I probably wouldn't be able to do really complicated stuff. I also do minor artistic work with editing ability and item buttons (and sometimes make new ones) in GIMP.

In regards to my earlier question about your weapon system, I think I poorly worded my question. I meant how your upgrading/combining system worked and if you could provide a screenshot of an example trigger and maybe a dummy unit. It seems it has to be triggered and probably needs validators too but I am not sure how to go about that.

Can you also please explain a bit more detail about what you are trying to do with behaviors for a single unit?

@TyaStarcraft: Go

I am sorry to ask a noob question, but what exactly are catalogs and in the context of weapons, what can they do?

@DrSuperEvil: Go

unlike wc3 upgrades can be reset too, or set to any level

Even with triggers: how can i reset an upgrade level? But that's probably off topic now.

@Stormahawk: GoI am not that skilled in data editing. So maybe we could help each other out. Maybe shoot a pm at me.

and what do you mean with behavior for a single unit?

@Freddy2287: Go

just set it to level 0 with triggers?

yes.. just saw it.. seams I overlooked it all the time :-D

What is the simplest way to have weapons stack? Weapons stacking is important to strategy in my  map. I am somewhat open to more complicated workarounds.