Alrighty, so I've been playing around with the data editor more, trying to get my bearings with it, so I can stop being 'bad' and using the trigger editor for everything >.> I started with a tutorial, I beleive via Rileystarcraft, for making a Shockwave ability, went through it, made sense. I then tried to make my own little Nova type ability, which works, albeit looks kinda funny.
Now I'm trying to make an ability that is an instant effect, no target. It will launch a infestor tentacle at every enemy unit within X distance, and start channeling. The infested units will then take Y damage per second, and give that much life back to the caster unit. If the infested units move out of range, the tentacle and effects are broken.
So I made the ability, it works fine, but there's a few things that I can't seem to figure out.
I don't understand how to make it so my caster unit channels, as in sits there and cant be used until the channel is broken.
I don't understand how to make it so when my unit is channeling, the cancel button shows up instead of the others.
I don't understand how to make it so when the units move out of range, the effect breaks.
When the units die, the health gain keeps happening anyways, I want it to stop draining life if there is no life to drain.
I haven't the feintest idea how to do the graphics... I tried referencing the infestors ability, but I really am clueless when it comes to using the Event editor thing for the actors. I tried changing the Infestors tentacle actor's events that happened in relation to the infestors ability, to happen in relation to my ability instead. The effect was one single tentacle would pop up, and then just disapear without even connecting.
I don't know how to describe the methods I used 100% ahead of time, so I'm going to upload the map after I toss this up, and will edit this post to have it on it as soon as I can.
The ability I'm working on is named Drain Souls, and I believe everything is appropriately named and should be simple to find in the editor. I have my Drain Souls ability as an Effect - Instant, the effect is Drain Souls(Initial Search), which finds all enemy units within 8 units, and applies the effect Drain Souls(Launch Missile) to each, which fires my invisible tentacle, which applies the effect Drain Souls(Persistant) which ticks every .5 seconds, for 10 seconds, running Drain Souls(Persistant Set) each time, which splits off into Drain Souls(Damage) which is straight forward, dealing 5 damage; and Drain Souls(Health Gain) which grants the caster unit 5 health.
If there is anything else you need to know, I'll gladly try and explain myself further, but this was quite long winded as it is.
An interesting ability, but you can't cancel an instant effect. Even though you can adjust the Cast Time and Finish Time, etc to prevent your unit from moving around while channeling, the effect has already happened. This is why your unit doesn't appear to be channeling. Also, you have to put the cancel button in it's own slot as the other command buttons don't disappear.
A better way to do this would be to make the ability start up a Create Persistent effect (with the Channeled flag set) that calls the area search effect every .5 seconds (with a period count of 20). The area search should call the damage/health set effect. Doing it this way will make it so that if you cancel the ability, it will stop producing the effect. Also, if the unit moves out of range or dies, it stops being targeted by the area search.
You'll need to make a beam actor for the tentacle to make it stick around, which will actually be the most complicated part as you'll want to make it appear when the unit first gets affected by the ability, and disappear only when the unit is no longer affected by the ability.
@TheOverbob: Go
Thanks for the reply. First question, what do I set my ability type to if not instant effect no target?
And sadly, the functionality I'm looking for will not work by running a search every .5 seconds, since I want it to be a 'use this at the right time or die' type ability when I transfer it into my other maps, and give the enemy some micro. I don't want it to register new units moving into range, just old ones that haven't left.
You can leave the ability type as instant effect no target, the main change is having the effect be the Create Persistent effect rather than the area search as that is what allows it to be channeled.
I'm sure there are other ways to achieve the effect that you want. I'm just not sure if adding a behavior to your caster unit that calls a periodic effect will count as channeling, but if it does, then that could also work. You would actually apply a behavior that causes an initial effect of an area search that applies a buff (duration 10 seconds or however long the ability is supposed to last) to the targets, then does a periodic effect that does the health drain in an area search, but only affects targets with the buff. This would prevent it from acquiring new targets, but would also let it re-acquire initial targets that move back into range.
I've been playing with the Neural Parasite Tentacle attack actor and I managed to make it spawn one tentacle for each target, but for some reason it is not "sticking" to the target, so if they move the tentacle just floats in the air. Also, I'm having trouble figuring out how to destroy the tentacle when the target dies or moves out of range (since the actor is actually created on the caster unit, you can't simply check for a behavior to turn off).
Hmmm, I quite liked the idea of having multiple tentacles flying all over the place. But if that can't be done, its simply a visual thing, I could just use other effects, just not a chain. Likely something like the hallucination birth model every time it ticks on each target it ticks on.
Is it possible to give a search area the parameters of a negative. For example, a ring, instead of a circle. So I could have 2 searches going on. The initial one places the behavior, then tied in with the persistent, I would have another one, in a ring just outside the range of the initial one, that would remove the behavior.
I don't understand how to make it so my caster unit channels, as in sits there and cant be used until the channel is broken.
I don't understand how to make it so when my unit is channeling, the cancel button shows up instead of the others.
I don't understand how to make it so when the units move out of range, the effect breaks.
When the units die, the health gain keeps happening anyways, I want it to stop draining life if there is no life to drain. (you gain 2 hp per sec per unit with the debuff)
I haven't the feintest idea how to do the graphics... I tried referencing the infestors ability, but I really am clueless when it comes to using the Event editor thing for the actors. I tried changing the Infestors tentacle actor's events that happened in relation to the infestors ability, to happen in relation to my ability instead. The effect was one single tentacle would pop up, and then just disapear without even connecting.
-------------------------
For the graphics, you need to change the instantly add buff effect to a missile effect, it's a lot of work and as you can see by what I did - I'm lazy.
Well, I managed to get the tentacles to attach to the initial targets, follow them around, and then disappear when the ability stops channeling. I can even destroy a tentacle when a target moves out of range, but it always removes the last created tentacle, rather than the one affecting the unit that moved out of range. I also can't get any of the tentacles to disappear when the target dies.
There's a lot of stuff in the Actor Events field that I don't understand. I think I'm starting to get the hang of stuff like References and scope, but I still can't make this work.
Based on what I've got so far, it must be possible, we just need to figure out the proper events.
I sadly don't have the first idea of what to do in the event editor. Here I thought myself clever just changing the names from Neural Parasite to my ability.
I also can't think of a good way to remove the behaviour. I can't find a way to make a search area, only search in a Ring rather then a Circle, so that method is out. I was going to make the behavior apply a search effect that would look for the mule, but I can't seem to get that working either.
I solved that problem by making a period area search that has two areas. The first applies a short-duration buff in radius 8 and the second removes the original buff in radius 10, but only if the target doesn't have the short-duration buff. Not the greatest solution, but it does work.
I know this thread is really old, but I'm currently making the exact same ability. My only problem is that I can't get multiple tentacles to spawn or follow the targets. If somebody could tell me how Overbob managed that, it'd be working fine.
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Alrighty, so I've been playing around with the data editor more, trying to get my bearings with it, so I can stop being 'bad' and using the trigger editor for everything >.> I started with a tutorial, I beleive via Rileystarcraft, for making a Shockwave ability, went through it, made sense. I then tried to make my own little Nova type ability, which works, albeit looks kinda funny.
Now I'm trying to make an ability that is an instant effect, no target. It will launch a infestor tentacle at every enemy unit within X distance, and start channeling. The infested units will then take Y damage per second, and give that much life back to the caster unit. If the infested units move out of range, the tentacle and effects are broken.
So I made the ability, it works fine, but there's a few things that I can't seem to figure out.
I don't know how to describe the methods I used 100% ahead of time, so I'm going to upload the map after I toss this up, and will edit this post to have it on it as soon as I can.
The ability I'm working on is named Drain Souls, and I believe everything is appropriately named and should be simple to find in the editor. I have my Drain Souls ability as an Effect - Instant, the effect is Drain Souls(Initial Search), which finds all enemy units within 8 units, and applies the effect Drain Souls(Launch Missile) to each, which fires my invisible tentacle, which applies the effect Drain Souls(Persistant) which ticks every .5 seconds, for 10 seconds, running Drain Souls(Persistant Set) each time, which splits off into Drain Souls(Damage) which is straight forward, dealing 5 damage; and Drain Souls(Health Gain) which grants the caster unit 5 health.
If there is anything else you need to know, I'll gladly try and explain myself further, but this was quite long winded as it is.
An interesting ability, but you can't cancel an instant effect. Even though you can adjust the Cast Time and Finish Time, etc to prevent your unit from moving around while channeling, the effect has already happened. This is why your unit doesn't appear to be channeling. Also, you have to put the cancel button in it's own slot as the other command buttons don't disappear.
A better way to do this would be to make the ability start up a Create Persistent effect (with the Channeled flag set) that calls the area search effect every .5 seconds (with a period count of 20). The area search should call the damage/health set effect. Doing it this way will make it so that if you cancel the ability, it will stop producing the effect. Also, if the unit moves out of range or dies, it stops being targeted by the area search.
You'll need to make a beam actor for the tentacle to make it stick around, which will actually be the most complicated part as you'll want to make it appear when the unit first gets affected by the ability, and disappear only when the unit is no longer affected by the ability.
@TheOverbob: Go Thanks for the reply. First question, what do I set my ability type to if not instant effect no target?
And sadly, the functionality I'm looking for will not work by running a search every .5 seconds, since I want it to be a 'use this at the right time or die' type ability when I transfer it into my other maps, and give the enemy some micro. I don't want it to register new units moving into range, just old ones that haven't left.
You can leave the ability type as instant effect no target, the main change is having the effect be the Create Persistent effect rather than the area search as that is what allows it to be channeled.
I'm sure there are other ways to achieve the effect that you want. I'm just not sure if adding a behavior to your caster unit that calls a periodic effect will count as channeling, but if it does, then that could also work. You would actually apply a behavior that causes an initial effect of an area search that applies a buff (duration 10 seconds or however long the ability is supposed to last) to the targets, then does a periodic effect that does the health drain in an area search, but only affects targets with the buff. This would prevent it from acquiring new targets, but would also let it re-acquire initial targets that move back into range.
I've been playing with the Neural Parasite Tentacle attack actor and I managed to make it spawn one tentacle for each target, but for some reason it is not "sticking" to the target, so if they move the tentacle just floats in the air. Also, I'm having trouble figuring out how to destroy the tentacle when the target dies or moves out of range (since the actor is actually created on the caster unit, you can't simply check for a behavior to turn off).
Hmmm, I quite liked the idea of having multiple tentacles flying all over the place. But if that can't be done, its simply a visual thing, I could just use other effects, just not a chain. Likely something like the hallucination birth model every time it ticks on each target it ticks on.
Is it possible to give a search area the parameters of a negative. For example, a ring, instead of a circle. So I could have 2 searches going on. The initial one places the behavior, then tied in with the persistent, I would have another one, in a ring just outside the range of the initial one, that would remove the behavior.
I don't understand how to make it so my caster unit channels, as in sits there and cant be used until the channel is broken.I don't understand how to make it so when my unit is channeling, the cancel button shows up instead of the others.I don't understand how to make it so when the units move out of range, the effect breaks.
When the units die, the health gain keeps happening anyways, I want it to stop draining life if there is no life to drain.(you gain 2 hp per sec per unit with the debuff)I haven't the feintest idea how to do the graphics... I tried referencing the infestors ability, but I really am clueless when it comes to using the Event editor thing for the actors. I tried changing the Infestors tentacle actor's events that happened in relation to the infestors ability, to happen in relation to my ability instead. The effect was one single tentacle would pop up, and then just disapear without even connecting.
-------------------------For the graphics, you need to change the instantly add buff effect to a missile effect, it's a lot of work and as you can see by what I did - I'm lazy.
Well, I managed to get the tentacles to attach to the initial targets, follow them around, and then disappear when the ability stops channeling. I can even destroy a tentacle when a target moves out of range, but it always removes the last created tentacle, rather than the one affecting the unit that moved out of range. I also can't get any of the tentacles to disappear when the target dies.
There's a lot of stuff in the Actor Events field that I don't understand. I think I'm starting to get the hang of stuff like References and scope, but I still can't make this work.
Based on what I've got so far, it must be possible, we just need to figure out the proper events.
I sadly don't have the first idea of what to do in the event editor. Here I thought myself clever just changing the names from Neural Parasite to my ability.
I also can't think of a good way to remove the behaviour. I can't find a way to make a search area, only search in a Ring rather then a Circle, so that method is out. I was going to make the behavior apply a search effect that would look for the mule, but I can't seem to get that working either.
I solved that problem by making a period area search that has two areas. The first applies a short-duration buff in radius 8 and the second removes the original buff in radius 10, but only if the target doesn't have the short-duration buff. Not the greatest solution, but it does work.
I know this thread is really old, but I'm currently making the exact same ability. My only problem is that I can't get multiple tentacles to spawn or follow the targets. If somebody could tell me how Overbob managed that, it'd be working fine.