Part of my composite unit skeleton project. Any bug reports/solutions would be appreciated. Soon will be reduced to a user friendly mod for anyone to use to make composite units (15/07/2016)
Is a tetrapedal walker from which visuals can be hung and can trample units under foot. Can leap at targets and also has a stomp and body slam attack when attacking that uses the leg likely to cause the most damage or the body itself.
The foot movement uses a tentacle that on impact creates a model type actor at the point like the Lurker spines which then uses reference set to change the hosting to the tentacle so the return is not visible. This system allows Launch Missile effects to be used to take steps. The rest of the leg visuals hang off this system.
The legs use the SOp (Forward Vector) method to create a stable platform on which the leg is attached.
The upper and lower leg structural elements both face a model at an offset in the -x/-y direction to the other. To prevent issues with digi/retrograde legs the offsets are imperfect to favour one or the other. To further reduce the previously mentioned issue the feet on creation are raised before being lowered and a SOp (Explicit Rotation) is used to further increase the odds of the one direction. There is also a Click Response behaviour to help fix the rare uncooperative legs. This creates a Dynamic boom from which visuals can be hung
There is a MK2 rotation sensor (prototype seen in Turn Sensor map) that measures in three locations at 120 degrees to each other to allow a degree of confidence in the direction being turned if one measurement is faulty. Also detects the range of the measurements from the unit to prevent the map edge/unpathable terrain causing false readings. This allows the pace offsets to be corrected when turning left or right, moving forwards and when standing idle.
The leap attack is known to bug occasionally when autocasting because the autocast ignores the arc of the ability launching the unit backwards. The legs are fixed the next time a step is taken.
The stomp and body slam attack ennumerates the numbers of units in the range of each leg and the body using buff stacks before stomping or body slamming the area with the most targets.
There are two birth animation options for the walker able to be applied with a Buff behaviour on creation.
Current version has four leg themes as inspiration which are randomly chosen when the map is tested. The Terran theme is a minimalist Terran leg made of a bunker foot (Terratron terrorize) and a leg of two hex columns to show how easy it is to make a decent leg. The Protoss themed legs I call the Greater Archon, just imagine them with a few xel naga hull plates surrounding a protoss hero gate with a dirty big dark archon on top launching electrified death at you. The Zerg theme I call Zerg Gargantuan, imagine 6-8 of those wading through your forces holding up a gigantic zerg horror with multiple glowing red eyes that is devouring your forces with several tentacle like tongues. The final shape theme uses only a single model that is retextured, tinted and/or animation paused for all parts to create great results (includes a winged knee crest even).
V2.0 has had the actor creation process simplified to the avatar, body main and leg origin actors to make it easier for players to create additional legs. All custom data is fully annotated in the editor comments and with prefixes and suffixes.
