Interesting approach using target sort instead of markers. I've implemented chain lightning a couple of times and usually I set the Marker ID enabled flag under the weapon (or ability) and then add a (No Markers) validator to the damage effect. It requires creating a few less objects that way.
However, the target sort approach is interesting, and I've been looking around for someone who got them to work correctly, so good job.
When you do, please consider adding a newbie/basic questions forum to divert some of the noise from the mapmaking forum.
Mmmm, but what would be a feasible way to divide up the Map Dev forum?
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I dunno but it would be nice if you could somehow split up really basic questions with more advanced discussion. The basic problem is that simple questions can be answered by a lot of people so they get lots of discussion while tough questions maybe only a handful of people know how to answer and they get buried before they see a response. Which means that as you get more and more experience with the editor, the usefulness of the forums decreases. As traffic is surely going to spike like crazy when the game is released this phenomenon is only going to be reinforced.
Maybe have a beginner's FAQ and tutorial list somewhere and lock any topics asking things that can easily be answered from those resources?
In the near future, i'd like to get it done after we roll out the new skin. Then probably take another look at the current forums again and see if we can break ti up more if needed, :).
When you do, please consider adding a newbie/basic questions forum to divert some of the noise from the mapmaking forum.
Well I've figured out a solution that doesn't require an inventory and still requires the powerup to be clicked on. Make a Set effect that links to whatever you want the powerup to do, and add "Suicide (Remove)" to the end of the set. Then set the unit's Powerup Effect field to that effect. Whenever a unit uses the powerup (which requires clicking on it, not just proximity) the powerup effect will be triggered and then the powerup will remove itself.
This does not require the triggering unit to have an inventory.
To do this in the data editor, in the actor's aliases field add something (like _Attachment) and then in the events field of the main actor if you want to send a message to the attached actor, set the Target field to "_Attachment" or whatever alias you used.
This works both ways, you can have the attachment send messages to the host this way using the _Selectable alias.
I've been playing around with items and inventories today and I found a showstopping bug. Whenever I left-click on a consumable item in the inventory (either instant or targeted), instead of using it, the game thinks I'm sending a drop command, except as soon as I let go of the left mouse button it cancels it. It's kind of hard to explain but basically it's impossible to use items because the game is interpreting a left click as a drop command.
Also, if I set a hotkey for an item, it doesn't work for using the item, even if the inventory is open. Am I missing something or is this another bug?
edit: Made a new map and recreated everything from scratch as simple as possible and it's still occurring, so at this point I'm just going to assume that usable items are broken in this build of the game. :(
second edit: Restarting the editor, with no other changes made, fixed the problem. Some sort of editor bug I guess?
I'm currently working on a TD where all the creeps are procedurally generated. There are three types of creeps each wave: 32 fodder (ground, normal hp, no special attributes or abilities), 16 specials (one of the following: flyer, cloaked, regen, fast, shielded), and 8 elites (either two of the special attributes, or one plus a unique ability, such as an aura, spawns on death, heals nearby creeps, etc.) Towers are all general purpose but most are particularly effective against certain attributes, such as the fire tower preventing regeneration etc. Because you never know what's coming next it's necessary to build a lot of variety of towers and helps to micro them to mitigate the creep abilities they counter as well.
I also removed tower upgrading. After making a prototype TD with upgrading I realized there was nothing fun or interesting about going from Photon Cannon Level 1 to Photon Cannon Level 2. Instead of upgrading individual towers, I have research upgrades that affect all towers of a particular type - six per tower, arranged in four tiers (2, 2, 1, and 1.) To get a 2nd tier upgrade you need at least 1 other upgrade, to get 3rd tier upgrade you need at least 2 other upgrade (from any tier), etc. The upgrades are varied and range from damage, range, armor penetration, critical strike, or increasing the duration of status effects. Generally the 4th tier upgrade is something a bit more interesting - it might add a status effect to the tower or cause it to do splash damage or let it hit air units. Each upgrade costs one gas, and you get a gas after every round, so it works sort of like a talent tree.
There are also heroes which are something I always preferred in TDs because they give you something to micro during the rounds (although lately I've been making most of their abilities autocast because I don't want it to be too micro intensive.) Heroes have tiered upgrades just like towers, so there's a lot of choice in what to spend your gas on and hard decisions to make. Their damage scales automatically based on the current wave because in the prototype xp gain made it too important to get heroes ASAP because they couldn't catch up fast enough if you got them later on.
One other thing I'm doing a bit differently is that it's not really survival based. Instead it's centered around competing for the high score. There is a survival element but it's tuned pretty loosely and you'll only fail if you fall really far behind. But the main goal is to get the best score possible, competing against the other players in the game as well as your own personal best. There are a bunch of elements geared to make the scoring system more interesting - for example getting a perfect round earns you a double score multiplier in the next round, and you earn extra points for any unspent money and gas at the end of a round, so there's a bit of a tradeoff in that if you can hold off on spending some of your money you can get extra points, but you don't want to risk letting anything get through because not getting the multiplier is a huge loss.
Anyway I've been working on this for the last few weeks and saw this thread on TDs so I thought I'd share.
By the way the prototype version is available here if you want to try it out. It has a lot in common with the version I'm currently working on (most of the same towers, heroes, and abilities, although many work a bit differently) but mechanically speaking its way different and functions much more similarly to what you might considered "standard" for TDs.
This is the wrong forum btw. The actor event you want is "Abil.YourAbility.SourceCastStart" and the message should be "PlayAnim Attack Attack". The marines don't have a Spell animation, which is what the ghost uses, so if you were copying the ghost events and didn't see anything playing that was the problem.
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Interesting approach using target sort instead of markers. I've implemented chain lightning a couple of times and usually I set the Marker ID enabled flag under the weapon (or ability) and then add a (No Markers) validator to the damage effect. It requires creating a few less objects that way.
However, the target sort approach is interesting, and I've been looking around for someone who got them to work correctly, so good job.
0
Quote from zrbecker:
I read somewhere that it is under banks in triggers. i haven't really played with it.
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Banks are stored locally in your My Documents folder.
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Well now I know why I couldn't find a style for italics.
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Quote from sixen:
Quote from RileyStarcraft: Go
@sixen: Go
When you do, please consider adding a newbie/basic questions forum to divert some of the noise from the mapmaking forum.
Mmmm, but what would be a feasible way to divide up the Map Dev forum?
----
I dunno but it would be nice if you could somehow split up really basic questions with more advanced discussion. The basic problem is that simple questions can be answered by a lot of people so they get lots of discussion while tough questions maybe only a handful of people know how to answer and they get buried before they see a response. Which means that as you get more and more experience with the editor, the usefulness of the forums decreases. As traffic is surely going to spike like crazy when the game is released this phenomenon is only going to be reinforced.
Maybe have a beginner's FAQ and tutorial list somewhere and lock any topics asking things that can easily be answered from those resources?
0
When you do, please consider adding a newbie/basic questions forum to divert some of the noise from the mapmaking forum.
0
Has anyone discovered the right actor events to trigger a sound when an item is picked up or dropped?
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Well I've figured out a solution that doesn't require an inventory and still requires the powerup to be clicked on. Make a Set effect that links to whatever you want the powerup to do, and add "Suicide (Remove)" to the end of the set. Then set the unit's Powerup Effect field to that effect. Whenever a unit uses the powerup (which requires clicking on it, not just proximity) the powerup effect will be triggered and then the powerup will remove itself.
This does not require the triggering unit to have an inventory.
0.959119496855346
To do this in the data editor, in the actor's aliases field add something (like _Attachment) and then in the events field of the main actor if you want to send a message to the attached actor, set the Target field to "_Attachment" or whatever alias you used.
This works both ways, you can have the attachment send messages to the host this way using the _Selectable alias.
0
http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/rileys-tower-defense/
Take a look at the Engineer's Proximity Mine spell.
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I believe you'll have better luck editing the arc of the weapon, not the arc of the turret.
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Launch sounds are referenced in the "Launch Assets" field of the Attack actor.
This might help:
http://rileystarcraft.blogspot.com/2010/06/tutorial-create-missile-weapon.html
Although it's focused on missile weapons the bit about changing the launch assets is applicable to any attack.
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I've been playing around with items and inventories today and I found a showstopping bug. Whenever I left-click on a consumable item in the inventory (either instant or targeted), instead of using it, the game thinks I'm sending a drop command, except as soon as I let go of the left mouse button it cancels it. It's kind of hard to explain but basically it's impossible to use items because the game is interpreting a left click as a drop command.
Also, if I set a hotkey for an item, it doesn't work for using the item, even if the inventory is open. Am I missing something or is this another bug?
edit: Made a new map and recreated everything from scratch as simple as possible and it's still occurring, so at this point I'm just going to assume that usable items are broken in this build of the game. :(
second edit: Restarting the editor, with no other changes made, fixed the problem. Some sort of editor bug I guess?
0
It's under Vital Regeneration Bonus (bottom of Unit tab.)
0
I'm currently working on a TD where all the creeps are procedurally generated. There are three types of creeps each wave: 32 fodder (ground, normal hp, no special attributes or abilities), 16 specials (one of the following: flyer, cloaked, regen, fast, shielded), and 8 elites (either two of the special attributes, or one plus a unique ability, such as an aura, spawns on death, heals nearby creeps, etc.) Towers are all general purpose but most are particularly effective against certain attributes, such as the fire tower preventing regeneration etc. Because you never know what's coming next it's necessary to build a lot of variety of towers and helps to micro them to mitigate the creep abilities they counter as well.
I also removed tower upgrading. After making a prototype TD with upgrading I realized there was nothing fun or interesting about going from Photon Cannon Level 1 to Photon Cannon Level 2. Instead of upgrading individual towers, I have research upgrades that affect all towers of a particular type - six per tower, arranged in four tiers (2, 2, 1, and 1.) To get a 2nd tier upgrade you need at least 1 other upgrade, to get 3rd tier upgrade you need at least 2 other upgrade (from any tier), etc. The upgrades are varied and range from damage, range, armor penetration, critical strike, or increasing the duration of status effects. Generally the 4th tier upgrade is something a bit more interesting - it might add a status effect to the tower or cause it to do splash damage or let it hit air units. Each upgrade costs one gas, and you get a gas after every round, so it works sort of like a talent tree.
There are also heroes which are something I always preferred in TDs because they give you something to micro during the rounds (although lately I've been making most of their abilities autocast because I don't want it to be too micro intensive.) Heroes have tiered upgrades just like towers, so there's a lot of choice in what to spend your gas on and hard decisions to make. Their damage scales automatically based on the current wave because in the prototype xp gain made it too important to get heroes ASAP because they couldn't catch up fast enough if you got them later on.
One other thing I'm doing a bit differently is that it's not really survival based. Instead it's centered around competing for the high score. There is a survival element but it's tuned pretty loosely and you'll only fail if you fall really far behind. But the main goal is to get the best score possible, competing against the other players in the game as well as your own personal best. There are a bunch of elements geared to make the scoring system more interesting - for example getting a perfect round earns you a double score multiplier in the next round, and you earn extra points for any unspent money and gas at the end of a round, so there's a bit of a tradeoff in that if you can hold off on spending some of your money you can get extra points, but you don't want to risk letting anything get through because not getting the multiplier is a huge loss.
Anyway I've been working on this for the last few weeks and saw this thread on TDs so I thought I'd share.
By the way the prototype version is available here if you want to try it out. It has a lot in common with the version I'm currently working on (most of the same towers, heroes, and abilities, although many work a bit differently) but mechanically speaking its way different and functions much more similarly to what you might considered "standard" for TDs.
http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/rileys-tower-defense/
0
This is the wrong forum btw. The actor event you want is "Abil.YourAbility.SourceCastStart" and the message should be "PlayAnim Attack Attack". The marines don't have a Spell animation, which is what the ghost uses, so if you were copying the ghost events and didn't see anything playing that was the problem.