SC2Mapster

I would like to make an attack that looks sort of like a spray of water. As far as I know, none of the existing sc2 attacks look anything like this, so I probably need to make it from scratch. Looking through the existing sc2 models, I see something called "ShorelineWavesBeach.m3" which looks like a small animated spray of water. If I could get a bunch of these to launch from my unit, I think that would work quite well.

Any help is appreciated!

Have a look at this post, I used just about anything I found that looked remotely like a water effect ;)

The video looks really good, especially, the "Rising Tide" attack. Unfortunately, almost none of the effects from your elemental work when I load the map :( But I'll look inside and try to figure out how you did it.

Quote from XPilot: Go

The video looks really good, especially, the "Rising Tide" attack. Unfortunately, almost none of the effects from your elemental work when I load the map :( But I'll look inside and try to figure out how you did it.

Strange, I just downloaded the map to see, if a recent patch broke it, but I had no major issues. All effects worked and showed up just fine, just the steam explosion visuals malfunctioned occasionally.

I think the problem is that there is no "RisingTideLaunchLeftBeam" in the map, which unfortunately is exactly the effect I want.

Edit: That's just set by default in the editor, not actually used. It seems though that the Rising Tide Missile actor has it's model set to Invisible... isn't this usually the field used to set the model for the attack?

The missile is set to invisible, because it didn't work the way I wanted, when I used the model just as missile model. If you open the Events +, you will see some events, which spawn the ElementalAttackImpact actor every 0.1 seconds at the location of the missile (I wasn't too worried about performance, since this is just a showcase map). It uses the Water Splash model.

Ok, that makes sense. I still can't figure out why nothing seems to work when I open your map, but I will try that in my own map.

You said that your method is not good performance-wise. What would be the right way to get this type of effect?

Quote from XPilot: Go

You said that your method is not good performance-wise. What would be the right way to get this type of effect?

Well, I don't think its that bad, unless you spam the ability a lot. It creates a couple of actors per second, this happens just as well in huge battles of regular SC2 units, even more so.
As you can see, it doesn't cause major issues while recording on high settings, and my pc is not the best. So unless you notice major fps drops in your map, it is probably fine, just keep the ability in mind, if you should indeed run into performance problems.

If problems arise, you could try to reduce the interval at which those actors are spawned, or you could use a single actor and reset its animation, however I am not even sure, if an animation restart is a significant performance gain over creating a new actor. Also, it would change the visuals significantly.

So I think the reason it didn't work is because of my graphic settings. On another computer, with all settings on max, the visual effects worked properly.

So I basically copied Kueken's Rising Tide attack, and it for the most part works like I would like it to work. The only problem is that the WaterSplash models are not being created at the same place as the missile; they just follow a path from the bottom of the attacking unit. The missile itself appears to launch from the correct place and follow a reasonable path to the target.

Is there any way around this? Or is it hardcoded into the actual model file?

Also, I have tried to do the same thing with other models, such as the photon cannon attack, and had the same problem.

Then your missiles are probably messed up.

Do you use an Action actor for your missiles? If yes, is the Art - Missile field correctly linked to your missile actor? These are the 2 main reasons for a missile to hug the terrain.

€ re-read your previous posts, this doesn't seem to be the problem, since your missile uses the correct path. Check the Host - Subject field for the water splash, it should probably be set to _Missile. Also, if everything fails, you can probably use local offset site operations to raise it from the floor.

If you cannot get it to work, I suggest, you attach an example map, so we can have a look at it.

So changing the Host - Subject to _Missile did work. The WaterSplash models are now being created along the correct path. Another idea I had was having multiple missile launches at the same intervals. Before reading your reply, I was trying to do that, but with no success (no missiles are launched). Also, if I launch just one missile with the WaterSplash model, only the very top part of the water appears; maybe you also had that problem, and decided to use an Invisible model for the missile. I think having multiple moving missiles would look better in the end (I could get the jet of water to last any length of time, without changing its speed) so I want to at least get something like this working.

Another problem I'm having is with adjusting the launch point. I know I need to use a Site Op, but I'm not sure where to specify this.

Where do I specify the actual attachment point? Currently, I have it done in the Action actor's Combat : Launch Attachment Query.

I'm not sure how to get the Site actor to be put in the right place. I suspect it involves the Hosting - Subject field, as well as the Host Site Operations, but am not quite sure. Also, I can't seem to find the Force Launch Site flag in the action.