SC2Mapster

So in the past few months, I have gotten a lot more proficient in the data editor. I have created a lot of really interesting target-able abilities, but I still don't quite get Instants. A lot of the issue seems to be with persistents. For example, one ability I have creates a persistent that creates three search areas in an arc in front my caster. as Effect - Target it works perfectly, but when I try to make it Effect - Instant, I get a "must target unit" error. I tried changing all my Location fields and such to caster, but that did not seem to work.

Also, I have a problem with the button just plain not showing up for a different ability. This ability charges up the casters weapon, so that other abilities will be more effective based on how long this ability was charged for. All I did was create an Create Persistent effect with four periods spaced about .8 second apart, period effect being an apply behavior. Those are the only two effects I used. I made a custom button, and an actor for charging. But the button just isn't there! I've been running into the invisible button issue frequently today while working on different abilities. One of my buttons went invisible after I changed things on an unrelated ability! Luckily I'm not using it anymore so it doesn't matter, but still...

Also, I have checked to make sure it wasn't a careless error such as adding the ability to the wrong unit, or forgetting a field in the command card.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

@Selfcreation: Go

Its actually very simple to do this without triggers. For example, take a look at the hive mind emulator. It has an effect that applies the behavior. All you have to do is edit "player +" in the behavior, and change it to caster. I haven't actually tried this myself, but I consider the editor's mouseover tooltip - "determines which player will own the unit the behavior is applied to" to be pretty clear.

Hmm, well if it cancels out only a certain amount of dmg but not all of it, I'm not sure how you'd do that. But if you wanted it to negate ALL damage, you could make projectiles stop at the shield by having a periodic searcher with the radius being the same as the visual effect that kills all missiles.

Of course, beams would still go through as usual.

Quote from Zurom: Go

- - Animation Properties: Stand (do I have to add a number after the "Stand" dropbox?

If thats what the animation says in the previewer, yes. So if the previewers shows "Stand (3)" Then in the first drop box you select "stand," and then in the one that pops up under it, "03"

That one number can and does make the difference between the model showing or not showing.

With a missile, you don't really even need to do anything described in this tutorial. You can just give it a periodic searcher behavior with damage and suicide on impact, make it target a point, and voila, it works.

@Zurom: Go

Ok, well then you would make a new actor of type "Model", I don't think the subtype is all that important, I've gotten the same results using "model addition" or "model animation style one shot"

then go into its events and add those two events I described previously, as well as this:

Actor Creation

@Zurom: Go

Well, its hard to know exactly what you are trying to do without being a little more specific. I assume you want to give a behavior a constant visual effect, sort of like defensive matrix. The proper way to do this in the actor events is

Behavior.YourBehavior.On

Behavior.YourBehavior.Off

You could have the behavior make the unit invulnerable, and make sure all of your abilities have Invulnerable marked as Excluded in their target filters.

If you are using the method of making a normal launch missile effect, just giving the missile a periodic searcher behavior, as far as I know the actors should work the same is usual. Did you make sure that everything is hooked up properly, with the impact effect being the damage dealt upon collision?

Perhaps you could be a bit more specific. When you say they do not seem to work properly, do you mean the missiles just don't show up? Or that they don't visibly die?

@MeltAge: If you read my post right above yours, you'll see an easy solution to the problem using a "create unit" effect. If you do something like that, it should work fine.

@Bama21: If you're talking about something like, for example, adding the defensive matrix visual to a unit, heres a way to do it. Add a new behavior with type "buff" and add it to your unit. Since you want the visual to stay constantly, leave the duration at 0. The behavior is basically a dummy. After creating it, you want to create an actor of type model. For "based on", choose "model animation style continuous". Set the "art - model" to whatever model you want, then go to events - events+. Add two or three new events in there. (Three if you want to be able to stop the visual) They should be: Behavior.YourDummyBehavior.On Create Actor Creation Animation Play ((For animation properties, you need to set it to whatever the default animation of the model you chose is. For example, with the defensive matrix visual, you would set this to "Stand, 03". Also, set Time Variant to 1, and Time Type to Duration. Everything else under this action can be left alone.)) If you want to be able to stop the visual at some point, for example by removing the behavior from the unit, add: Behavior.YourDummyBehavior.Off Destroy Also, this should probably be in the tutorial request thread, or the Development -> Data forum.

I think he means something like in WoW, where every time you use an ability there is a short cooldown (1.5s usually) that runs on all of your abilities at once in addition to any ability's individual cooldowns.

Idk if its possible, maybe there is a trigger for it. If not you could make some sort of workaround where every ability applies a short buff that temporarily disables all other abilities. Visually it would be different from a cooldown, but functionally it would pretty much be the same I think.

I believe something using this system may be what you're looking for: http://forums.sc2mapster.com/resources/tutorials/10948-data-simple-one-shot-linear-attacks/

If anyone else is having a similar problem, I got it to work by using a totally different "miss" mechanic then the one described in the first post. Instead of making an extra attack actor and damage dummy, which didn't work for me, I instead made another persistent with one offset, which I set to the maximum range of my missile (in my case, (0,-9.5). For this persistent I had the period effect set to a "create unit" effect, which created an invisible dummy unit and gave it timed life. then for effect - final, I set the field to the original collision check persistent, and changed the ability's effect to the new persistent.

I think something may be lacking in your instructions for "miss actors". I have made a collision beam, as well as a collision missile, according to the information found in the first page of this thread. I also followed the procedures to make miss actors, but neither my beam or missile will show up when there isn't a unit in the line. (When a target is available, they both work perfectly) Some interesting miscellaneous clues: Setting the Remove Buff Effect (Or the Set effect when using miss actors) to Effect - Expire doesn't seem to work. My beam will only work when I instead set it to Effect - Final. With the beam: Whenever there is no potential target in the line, my unit (custom stalker) fires the beam at itself... from its weapon launch point to the ground beneath its feet. When the beam DOES connect to a target, it creates another beam that attacks itself in addition to the normal beam. What am I missing? Could someone who has gotten such things to work please chime in and help me out?