Thank you for your reply. I normally wouldn't ask people to do things for me, but that sounds simple enough. Maybe someone will see value in it and others can use it too.
One more question I suppose. As far as I know, all the humanoid units that can fight at range hold rifles in their arms. Is there a suitable animation for firing a handgun? And if so, could it just be plopped into the scientist? Or would a custom one have to be made?
Does anyone know how to replicate the sound that Marines have when you click on them and they talk? I'm going to be using some external vocals I found, but I want it to have that radio clicking sound that Marines have when they speak.
I managed to make it somewhat decent by cutting the start and end of some of their transmissions and pasting that to the start and end of the external vocals in Audacity, messing around with fading to make it sound more natural. I also added some noise (brown noise) in Audacity and messed around with the bass and treble for that. The static in the background sounds somewhat okay, but it's still audibly much different than the clicking Marines make when they talk.
Does anyone know how to generate that clicking static that marines use when they talk?
I'm in no hurry. I decided to put this off as a finishing touch after I've done all the other things for the map I'm working on. I figured it would be efficient to pose the question here and see what comes up in the meantime.
EDIT: As a hint and a teaser for what I'm working on, here's the audio clips I've come up with so far. :D
I don't know a lot about the editor. As far as I can tell, the Reaper and his pistols are the same model. I think the guy's pack I got the pistol from did the model work manually to separate weapons from their respective units.
As far as I know (I could be wrong), the model's skeleton has to have special bones defined as attachment points in order for you to attach things. I don't know this for sure. But I suspect that that's how it is. When I viewed the bones for the Scientist, he had a small list of (six) attachment points, but none of them were on any of his limbs. They were all "center" things, like his head, his "origin", stuff like that. Nothing you can put a gun on. Even if I knew how to attach the gun to one of those central points and offset it to his hand, it wouldn't move with his hand without some really complex offset manipulation that I have no idea if it's possible to do.
Heya. I downloaded one of the packs from this site that included models for all of the Terran weapons. My goal is to give the Scientist the Reaper pistol so Scientists can be used as units and have some way of fighting.
However, it looks like there's no attachment point for it. The arms/hands/forearms of the Scientist don't seem to have any attachment points.
So is it impossible to have the Scientist hold a gun without exporting, buying some expensive 3d modelling software, and re-importing?
EDIT: Oops, I should have put this in Data I think.
I've been thinking about it a bit more lately. I think I'm going to avoid the approach of using a negative buff that's disabled while the player has minerals. Because if the player runs out of minerals, all of his workers will get the negative buff simultaneously whether they've been paid or not. Originally I was thinking I wanted something that lets each worker get their pay in sync, but I kinda like the way each individual worker has a separately ticking pay period (that starts when the worker is built). It allows each individual worker to vary on how happy they might be.
I was going to actually go for something along the lines of what DrSuperEvil just posted. Except I didn't know about Switch effects. If it's what I think it is, then that's perfect. I was thinking of having a Payroll buff that ticks and executes a Set effect that contains both the positive and negative effects and use validators to see which one goes off. It sounds like Switch is something that I can use to do that more efficiently.
That way, workers will only get Unpaid if one of their payroll stacks goes off when the player has zero minerals. I can set it to have like a 30 second duration and be only stackable once and not refresh to make it so a worker gets just one Unpaid buff for the duration of their full pay period or something.
I'm thinking the negative effect will just drain like, half the worker's energy. And the worker has a maximum of like 1000 energy, and the positive effect of getting paid restores very little, so that's a big deal. And maybe put in some kind of effect that has a small random chance of going off if the worker is below a certain amount of energy. And that could change the ownership of the worker. I'm also thinking along the lines of adding an issue order effect to tell the worker to Move to a location near an opponent's building when this happens, but I gotta get this payroll thing working before I worry (too much) about that.
Ah, thank you Photoloss. That is... actually very similar to what I had already tried. But I was under the impression that the behavior did the complete opposite of what you're saying with the disable validator. I suppose that would explain the problem I had though. I had it set to check if the resources equaled 0, on my behavior that paid the worker, but the behavior never did anything.
If that's the case, then the editor's interface lied to me. I hovered over that field name with detail view on and it told me that it would disable the behavior if the validator returned false.
Is disable just something that pauses the behavior while the validator is true, and then resumes the behavior while the validator is false? Does that mean that the behavior's used duration and time to next period will pause and resume according to what the disable validator returns?
tdhsst: Naw, I plan on it just being normal melee combat with an added twist. That means that, while similar, it seems we each have our own unique ideas. :P
EDIT: I've been considering something else that I think will make it act more like I want. Your explanation puts my original idea back on the table, but I've been considering a new idea.
A hidden behavior that has a period that places a "Wages" behavior on every 30 second period. The wages behavior has a duration of 30 seconds. Its expire effect is a set effect called "Periodic Pay". That does two behaviors: It removes a mineral from the player and gives the unit ten energy. My Final Effect for the Wages behavior is going to be "Didn't Pay" or whatever negative behavior I settle on. I'm hoping that since Expire Effect's hover text says it goes off if the behavior finishes its duration, that it differentiates between Expiring and being removed, such as by a removal validator. If so, I can have it pay the worker if it expires normally, and apply "Didn't Pay" if it gets removed by a validator that compares the player's resources.
I was indeed already planning on having the Wages buff stack so I could pay the workers more by increasing the number of stacks.
I'm glad to see that you came up with your ideas idea independently. It hints to me that I'm on the right track.
EDIT: Wait... Okay I think my logic was just wrong the whole time, haha. It disables if the behavior returns false, and I was checking to see if minerals equaled 0, which would return true if minerals equaled 0, and return false if minerals were anything other than 0. So my original idea would have worked if I had checked to see if minerals were greater than zero.
Maybe I can use a hybrid between my/your initial idea and what I'm thinking now.
I just wash dishes at a hotel, haha! But I'm a big fan of free market ideas. I thought it would be cool to make a mod that sort of simulates players having to run a business in a melee game while trying to kill each other. xD If I can get this working, I'll make it so low energy workers are unhappy and they might quit and go work for your opponent.
Okay, I'm kind of stuck here. I'm new to the editor and I've been doing kinda okay groping around and figuring things out. But I seem to have run into a wall.
I'm trying to make a mod where your workers are employees that you have to pay to make them happy. I can't even get the beginning functionality of this working very well.
So far I've tried two things.
One: A buff that applies a periodic effect, with the effect being a modify player that subtracts a mineral. The problem with that is that nothing bad happens if you run out of minerals and can't pay your workers. The periodic effect just keeps ticking and your minerals don't go below zero. So I abandoned this idea to try something else.
Two: A buff that applies a periodic effect, with the effect being a "create healer" that costs minerals and heals the unit's own energy. I unchecked the channeling flag because I want the workers to be able to move while healing their energy. (I don't even know if that's what it does.) Then I gave drones a bunch of maximum energy and zero starting energy to test it. But this has a problem too. Every time the periodic effect ticks, the speed of healing goes up. Like it's stacking heal effects rather than just ticking them. So I tried a different way. I limited the periodic effect to being executed one time, and it works exactly how I want it to! It applies a constant heal that periodically subtracts a mineral for each worker that has the buff. But this approach has a problem too. It works "too well", I guess you could say. If you run out of minerals, every worker stops healing its energy, and when you get more minerals, they never start healing again, because the periodic effect was only set to run once!
So I'm stuck trying to solve that problem. One idea I have is a second buff that periodically checks to see if the original has been removed and reapplies it if it has. But I don't know how to do that. Validators only seem to be capable of disabling or removing the buff that they're in. They don't seem to be capable of determining whether a periodic effect should go off.
Is there an easier way to get this to do what I want it to do?
I want the player to be able to increase or decrease the pay their worker gets, so I want this to be stackable or modifiable. But I don't want to have to use triggers for it because I want it to be a mod that can be easily applied to existing melee maps.
I'll figure out how to increase or decrease the pay later, probably with a button on hatcheries, cc's, etc. For now I just want to get this initial thing to work right!
EDIT: I just laughed out loud when I posted this, and saw the title "Trying to implement worker payroll" above my picture of a wolf in a business suit.
If a behavior/effect can be used to alter the size of a unit, then you could randomly target units in an area and put random buffs on them, right? Make a set of buffs or something that each gives a different size, set them to hidden.
But I'm a newb too so I don't know if that's possible. But if it is, that could be one way of doing it. But you'd still have to figure out what is going to be casting that buff on them. And how to make sure you don't go casting it multiple times on the same zergling.
It seems to work though. I'm just doing something similar to what the Pylon tutorial did. Putting an effect in workers that subtracts minerals periodically.
Okay, thank you! With that in mind, I suppose I'll use Caster in the future since we know more about it than Origin. I was guessing Origin is what Caster is.
Actually, looking at it again, if you view it in Detail View, the Origin option is called "Player Origin". That's why I originally chose that one. My thinking was that it would target the player who owns that ability? And that Caster would target the unit. It just seemed to make more sense to me to target the player rather than the player's unit for giving resources. (Or in my case, taking away resources. I'm making a mod where your workers are employees that you have to pay or else they get unhappy.)
When you make a ModifyPlayer effect (CEffectModifyPlayer), there's an option to set a value for CEffectModifyPlayer_WhichPlayer_Value. Using the search feature of this forum, I found threads about doing something similar to what I want to do. The one I looked at is about pylons giving minerals periodically.
Why don't you set anything for CEffectModifyPlayer_WhichPlayer_Value other than the default, which is Target? Why not set it to Origin? If you don't have to use that field to make sure the effect gives the resources to the correct player, then what does that field even do?
0
Thank you for your reply. I normally wouldn't ask people to do things for me, but that sounds simple enough. Maybe someone will see value in it and others can use it too.
One more question I suppose. As far as I know, all the humanoid units that can fight at range hold rifles in their arms. Is there a suitable animation for firing a handgun? And if so, could it just be plopped into the scientist? Or would a custom one have to be made?
0
Does anyone know how to replicate the sound that Marines have when you click on them and they talk? I'm going to be using some external vocals I found, but I want it to have that radio clicking sound that Marines have when they speak.
I managed to make it somewhat decent by cutting the start and end of some of their transmissions and pasting that to the start and end of the external vocals in Audacity, messing around with fading to make it sound more natural. I also added some noise (brown noise) in Audacity and messed around with the bass and treble for that. The static in the background sounds somewhat okay, but it's still audibly much different than the clicking Marines make when they talk.
Does anyone know how to generate that clicking static that marines use when they talk?
I'm in no hurry. I decided to put this off as a finishing touch after I've done all the other things for the map I'm working on. I figured it would be efficient to pose the question here and see what comes up in the meantime.
EDIT: As a hint and a teaser for what I'm working on, here's the audio clips I've come up with so far. :D
0
I don't know a lot about the editor. As far as I can tell, the Reaper and his pistols are the same model. I think the guy's pack I got the pistol from did the model work manually to separate weapons from their respective units.
As far as I know (I could be wrong), the model's skeleton has to have special bones defined as attachment points in order for you to attach things. I don't know this for sure. But I suspect that that's how it is. When I viewed the bones for the Scientist, he had a small list of (six) attachment points, but none of them were on any of his limbs. They were all "center" things, like his head, his "origin", stuff like that. Nothing you can put a gun on. Even if I knew how to attach the gun to one of those central points and offset it to his hand, it wouldn't move with his hand without some really complex offset manipulation that I have no idea if it's possible to do.
0
Heya. I downloaded one of the packs from this site that included models for all of the Terran weapons. My goal is to give the Scientist the Reaper pistol so Scientists can be used as units and have some way of fighting.
However, it looks like there's no attachment point for it. The arms/hands/forearms of the Scientist don't seem to have any attachment points.
So is it impossible to have the Scientist hold a gun without exporting, buying some expensive 3d modelling software, and re-importing?
EDIT: Oops, I should have put this in Data I think.
0
I've been thinking about it a bit more lately. I think I'm going to avoid the approach of using a negative buff that's disabled while the player has minerals. Because if the player runs out of minerals, all of his workers will get the negative buff simultaneously whether they've been paid or not. Originally I was thinking I wanted something that lets each worker get their pay in sync, but I kinda like the way each individual worker has a separately ticking pay period (that starts when the worker is built). It allows each individual worker to vary on how happy they might be.
I was going to actually go for something along the lines of what DrSuperEvil just posted. Except I didn't know about Switch effects. If it's what I think it is, then that's perfect. I was thinking of having a Payroll buff that ticks and executes a Set effect that contains both the positive and negative effects and use validators to see which one goes off. It sounds like Switch is something that I can use to do that more efficiently.
That way, workers will only get Unpaid if one of their payroll stacks goes off when the player has zero minerals. I can set it to have like a 30 second duration and be only stackable once and not refresh to make it so a worker gets just one Unpaid buff for the duration of their full pay period or something.
I'm thinking the negative effect will just drain like, half the worker's energy. And the worker has a maximum of like 1000 energy, and the positive effect of getting paid restores very little, so that's a big deal. And maybe put in some kind of effect that has a small random chance of going off if the worker is below a certain amount of energy. And that could change the ownership of the worker. I'm also thinking along the lines of adding an issue order effect to tell the worker to Move to a location near an opponent's building when this happens, but I gotta get this payroll thing working before I worry (too much) about that.
0
Ah, thank you Photoloss. That is... actually very similar to what I had already tried. But I was under the impression that the behavior did the complete opposite of what you're saying with the disable validator. I suppose that would explain the problem I had though. I had it set to check if the resources equaled 0, on my behavior that paid the worker, but the behavior never did anything.
If that's the case, then the editor's interface lied to me. I hovered over that field name with detail view on and it told me that it would disable the behavior if the validator returned false.
Is disable just something that pauses the behavior while the validator is true, and then resumes the behavior while the validator is false? Does that mean that the behavior's used duration and time to next period will pause and resume according to what the disable validator returns?
tdhsst: Naw, I plan on it just being normal melee combat with an added twist. That means that, while similar, it seems we each have our own unique ideas. :P
EDIT: I've been considering something else that I think will make it act more like I want. Your explanation puts my original idea back on the table, but I've been considering a new idea.
A hidden behavior that has a period that places a "Wages" behavior on every 30 second period. The wages behavior has a duration of 30 seconds. Its expire effect is a set effect called "Periodic Pay". That does two behaviors: It removes a mineral from the player and gives the unit ten energy. My Final Effect for the Wages behavior is going to be "Didn't Pay" or whatever negative behavior I settle on. I'm hoping that since Expire Effect's hover text says it goes off if the behavior finishes its duration, that it differentiates between Expiring and being removed, such as by a removal validator. If so, I can have it pay the worker if it expires normally, and apply "Didn't Pay" if it gets removed by a validator that compares the player's resources.
I was indeed already planning on having the Wages buff stack so I could pay the workers more by increasing the number of stacks.
I'm glad to see that you came up with your ideas idea independently. It hints to me that I'm on the right track.
EDIT: Wait... Okay I think my logic was just wrong the whole time, haha. It disables if the behavior returns false, and I was checking to see if minerals equaled 0, which would return true if minerals equaled 0, and return false if minerals were anything other than 0. So my original idea would have worked if I had checked to see if minerals were greater than zero.
Maybe I can use a hybrid between my/your initial idea and what I'm thinking now.
0
I haven't tried this yet. But you can create an effect with the type CEffectCreateUnit. Maybe that will help you.
0
I just wash dishes at a hotel, haha! But I'm a big fan of free market ideas. I thought it would be cool to make a mod that sort of simulates players having to run a business in a melee game while trying to kill each other. xD If I can get this working, I'll make it so low energy workers are unhappy and they might quit and go work for your opponent.
0
Okay, I'm kind of stuck here. I'm new to the editor and I've been doing kinda okay groping around and figuring things out. But I seem to have run into a wall.
I'm trying to make a mod where your workers are employees that you have to pay to make them happy. I can't even get the beginning functionality of this working very well.
So far I've tried two things.
One: A buff that applies a periodic effect, with the effect being a modify player that subtracts a mineral. The problem with that is that nothing bad happens if you run out of minerals and can't pay your workers. The periodic effect just keeps ticking and your minerals don't go below zero. So I abandoned this idea to try something else.
Two: A buff that applies a periodic effect, with the effect being a "create healer" that costs minerals and heals the unit's own energy. I unchecked the channeling flag because I want the workers to be able to move while healing their energy. (I don't even know if that's what it does.) Then I gave drones a bunch of maximum energy and zero starting energy to test it. But this has a problem too. Every time the periodic effect ticks, the speed of healing goes up. Like it's stacking heal effects rather than just ticking them. So I tried a different way. I limited the periodic effect to being executed one time, and it works exactly how I want it to! It applies a constant heal that periodically subtracts a mineral for each worker that has the buff. But this approach has a problem too. It works "too well", I guess you could say. If you run out of minerals, every worker stops healing its energy, and when you get more minerals, they never start healing again, because the periodic effect was only set to run once!
So I'm stuck trying to solve that problem. One idea I have is a second buff that periodically checks to see if the original has been removed and reapplies it if it has. But I don't know how to do that. Validators only seem to be capable of disabling or removing the buff that they're in. They don't seem to be capable of determining whether a periodic effect should go off.
Is there an easier way to get this to do what I want it to do?
I want the player to be able to increase or decrease the pay their worker gets, so I want this to be stackable or modifiable. But I don't want to have to use triggers for it because I want it to be a mod that can be easily applied to existing melee maps.
I'll figure out how to increase or decrease the pay later, probably with a button on hatcheries, cc's, etc. For now I just want to get this initial thing to work right!
EDIT: I just laughed out loud when I posted this, and saw the title "Trying to implement worker payroll" above my picture of a wolf in a business suit.
0
If a behavior/effect can be used to alter the size of a unit, then you could randomly target units in an area and put random buffs on them, right? Make a set of buffs or something that each gives a different size, set them to hidden.
But I'm a newb too so I don't know if that's possible. But if it is, that could be one way of doing it. But you'd still have to figure out what is going to be casting that buff on them. And how to make sure you don't go casting it multiple times on the same zergling.
0
Umm... I'm not sure. I think so.
It's this thing.
It seems to work though. I'm just doing something similar to what the Pylon tutorial did. Putting an effect in workers that subtracts minerals periodically.
0
Okay, thank you! With that in mind, I suppose I'll use Caster in the future since we know more about it than Origin. I was guessing Origin is what Caster is.
Actually, looking at it again, if you view it in Detail View, the Origin option is called "Player Origin". That's why I originally chose that one. My thinking was that it would target the player who owns that ability? And that Caster would target the unit. It just seemed to make more sense to me to target the player rather than the player's unit for giving resources. (Or in my case, taking away resources. I'm making a mod where your workers are employees that you have to pay or else they get unhappy.)
0
When you make a ModifyPlayer effect (CEffectModifyPlayer), there's an option to set a value for CEffectModifyPlayer_WhichPlayer_Value. Using the search feature of this forum, I found threads about doing something similar to what I want to do. The one I looked at is about pylons giving minerals periodically.
Why don't you set anything for CEffectModifyPlayer_WhichPlayer_Value other than the default, which is Target? Why not set it to Origin? If you don't have to use that field to make sure the effect gives the resources to the correct player, then what does that field even do?