Hey I'm new to the data editor and am trying to figure out how to make a targetable spell, where the projectile follows the target. An example would be like death coil or stormbolt from Wc3.
I've taken a look at some tutorials and I came to the conclusion that what I need to make is:
Unit Missle - This is the actual missle
Actor Missle - The art of the missle
Actor Model For Launch - Art when it is casted
Actor Model For Impact - Art when it hits target
Actor Sound For Launch - Sound when it is launched
Actor Model For Impact - Sound when it hits target
Button - The button that is clicked
Targetable Ability - An ability where you have to click somewhere
I'm not sure what else I need maybe like a search effect, and a damage effect?
Anyone think they would be able to describe how to make it step by step? It would be very helpful. I tried looking for a tutorial, but none of them were on something like this.
Easiest thing would be to take an existing spell/weapon as a base. For example, create your ability and make it use the Marauder weapon. This is already set up for a projectile with damaga + side effect, so exactly what we need. Create the ability, make it execute the same effect the marauder weapon executes. Change the slow behavior to a stun, break everything down from there.
If you are really new to the data editor and have absolutely no clue what to do, the most important thing imo is to know what the different types of data exactly do. I'm by no means an expert, but the most important thing is to order the stuff you want to do in your head and think about what types of data could accomplish that.
The easiest and fastest way to get what you want is to do what Kueken explained, but if you want some understanding of how abilities work and how it links together you should first know what abilities, actors and effects do and what they are good for. For getting more deep effects on a target after the impact, like stuns or slows, it will also be necessary (or at least advised) to look into Behaviors. For the purpose of learning how the editor works I'd advise to build everything (with the exception of the models) from scratch and start with very basic looking and working abilities and projectiles, and work your way up from there.
As I said, I'm probably the wrong person to try to explain it to you, because I started working with the editor like a month ago, but I'll try to explain to you in a nutshell what the datatypes you will need do and how you should logically link them together to get what you want. The most important tabs for you will be Actors and Effects. Effects DO things, like applying damage, behaviors, or being a trigger condition for actors to show up. Effects can move, have a duration, fire multiple effects, search for units that are in an area around them and tons of other stuff, they are probably the most useful datatype in existence. Actors on the other hand are a bit more difficult to explain (at least for me, maybe someone has a good explanation in a short sentence), so I'll give you an explanation that is probably wrong but will at least be helpful for what you are trying to do. Actors are just the things that you see and hear. They have no impact on how the game itself plays out, they are just a necessary link between effects, units and the raw game data which consists of the different 3d model and sound files. They can also trigger other stuff with Events, which are basically exactly this, just triggers in the data editor.
So lets see with this explanation what we will probably need to get an ability like the one you described:
An ability which is later applied to the unit. You can change the cost of the ability (cooldown, mana/health cost etc), set cast time etc. Explore it yourself. The most important thing about this ability is, that it can fire an effect. You want it to fire a "Launch Missile" effect.
Noteworthy fields in the Launch Missile Effect types are "Impact Effect" (Effect which is fired when the Missile impacts), "Launch Effect" (You will not need it in your case of a following missile, because you will already fire this effect with your ability, but it can be very helpful in other cases), "Validators +" (Check about what Validators are yourself, won't explain this too long here), "Movers +" (check out the Blizzard Mover tutorial for reference, not the most important field but a very fun one to mess around with. And it is required to have a mover so your missile works) and the Launch and Impact Location.
We will need an Impact Effect. This is triggered above from your Launch Missile Effect. For a very basic ability you could just use a Damage Effect, note that if you want to fire multiple Effects you can't put them all into the "Impact Effect" field but you have to use a specific effect type called "Set", which is specifically designed to fire multiple Effects at once (one of the most important Effect types).
So, once your Impact Effects are properly set up (for getting stuns, slows and stuff like that you should look into Behaviors and "Apply Behavior" Effect types), it is time to get into some neat visuals and audio for your missile/ability. It is time for getting some actors going! For a flying missile you will need an "Action" type actor and a "Missile" type actor. Very important fields in the Action type actor: The "Impact Effect" and "Launch Effect" Tokens at the top. Insert your Launch&Impact Effects there. This is were the magic happens and actor & effect get linked together. The "Launch Attachment Query" orders where your missile will be fired. Every Model has various attachment points with different names, here you can say which attachment point your missile uses. If it is not set your ability/missile will fire from the ground under your caster unit. For testing purposes you can use for example "Center", pretty much every model has this attachment point. Also you should look into "Launch Assets", in this field you can control which animations, sounds and Arts are fired with your Missile. If the ability you use should play a soundfile when it is used, you can apply it here. There are other ways, for example you can trigger it with an Event, but it is very neat to do it in the Launch Assets & it is easily findable for everyone if you do it this way. There are other ways to do it, but this is pretty neat and makes everything clean and easily findable for other people :) (or for you in a couple of months)
The missile actor you created includes the Model of your missile, things like scale, you can experiment with setting an event in the "Event"-field like "ActorCreation -> SetTintColor (255,0,0)", which would be a trigger that tints your missile red after its creation. A really really important thing about this actor is, that you HAVE to create a unit in the unit tab of type "Default Settings (Projectile)" and link your actor to it in your Missile Actor under Token "Unit Name".
That's basically it. You will probably encounter some problems while you are creating your own ability, because my explanation wasn't really detailed. For this I'd recommend crosschecking everything with Kueken's "Colliding Projectiles" tutorial, which is great and introduced me into the topic & explained everything to me. Also you will want to create an Impact Sound Effect, which I didn't mention how to do. Try to figure it out yourself & ask if you have problems at some point :)
Maybe my explanation wasn't useful at all because you already know most of that stuff, but in this case it might help some other people. Maybe some stuff I got into is also plain wrong, in this case I hope someone else will correct me so I don't spread my stupid thoughts heheh
Great tutorial, I'll work on when I get home from work :). Some of the information you provided me with was new to me, so thank you. I will also check out that tutorial.
Don't mean to double post, but could someone take a look at my map, and see if they can figure out what's wrong with it? When it hits the target it always kills it, even when the damage amount is set to 1. When I set the damage amount to .5, it does .5 damage though? Any adivce would be helpful.
I learned by just going through everything that interested me in the data editor made by blizzard and the left 2 die mode. Rest I taught myself through experimentation.
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Contribute to the wiki (Wiki button at top of page) Considered easy altering of the unit textures?
Hey I'm new to the data editor and am trying to figure out how to make a targetable spell, where the projectile follows the target. An example would be like death coil or stormbolt from Wc3.
I've taken a look at some tutorials and I came to the conclusion that what I need to make is: Unit Missle - This is the actual missle Actor Missle - The art of the missle Actor Model For Launch - Art when it is casted Actor Model For Impact - Art when it hits target Actor Sound For Launch - Sound when it is launched Actor Model For Impact - Sound when it hits target Button - The button that is clicked Targetable Ability - An ability where you have to click somewhere
I'm not sure what else I need maybe like a search effect, and a damage effect?
Anyone think they would be able to describe how to make it step by step? It would be very helpful. I tried looking for a tutorial, but none of them were on something like this.
Easiest thing would be to take an existing spell/weapon as a base. For example, create your ability and make it use the Marauder weapon. This is already set up for a projectile with damaga + side effect, so exactly what we need. Create the ability, make it execute the same effect the marauder weapon executes. Change the slow behavior to a stun, break everything down from there.
If you are really new to the data editor and have absolutely no clue what to do, the most important thing imo is to know what the different types of data exactly do. I'm by no means an expert, but the most important thing is to order the stuff you want to do in your head and think about what types of data could accomplish that.
The easiest and fastest way to get what you want is to do what Kueken explained, but if you want some understanding of how abilities work and how it links together you should first know what abilities, actors and effects do and what they are good for. For getting more deep effects on a target after the impact, like stuns or slows, it will also be necessary (or at least advised) to look into Behaviors. For the purpose of learning how the editor works I'd advise to build everything (with the exception of the models) from scratch and start with very basic looking and working abilities and projectiles, and work your way up from there.
As I said, I'm probably the wrong person to try to explain it to you, because I started working with the editor like a month ago, but I'll try to explain to you in a nutshell what the datatypes you will need do and how you should logically link them together to get what you want. The most important tabs for you will be Actors and Effects. Effects DO things, like applying damage, behaviors, or being a trigger condition for actors to show up. Effects can move, have a duration, fire multiple effects, search for units that are in an area around them and tons of other stuff, they are probably the most useful datatype in existence. Actors on the other hand are a bit more difficult to explain (at least for me, maybe someone has a good explanation in a short sentence), so I'll give you an explanation that is probably wrong but will at least be helpful for what you are trying to do. Actors are just the things that you see and hear. They have no impact on how the game itself plays out, they are just a necessary link between effects, units and the raw game data which consists of the different 3d model and sound files. They can also trigger other stuff with Events, which are basically exactly this, just triggers in the data editor.
So lets see with this explanation what we will probably need to get an ability like the one you described:
That's basically it. You will probably encounter some problems while you are creating your own ability, because my explanation wasn't really detailed. For this I'd recommend crosschecking everything with Kueken's "Colliding Projectiles" tutorial, which is great and introduced me into the topic & explained everything to me. Also you will want to create an Impact Sound Effect, which I didn't mention how to do. Try to figure it out yourself & ask if you have problems at some point :)
Maybe my explanation wasn't useful at all because you already know most of that stuff, but in this case it might help some other people. Maybe some stuff I got into is also plain wrong, in this case I hope someone else will correct me so I don't spread my stupid thoughts heheh
Great tutorial, I'll work on when I get home from work :). Some of the information you provided me with was new to me, so thank you. I will also check out that tutorial.
Don't mean to double post, but could someone take a look at my map, and see if they can figure out what's wrong with it? When it hits the target it always kills it, even when the damage amount is set to 1. When I set the damage amount to .5, it does .5 damage though? Any adivce would be helpful.
Your ability works as intended, but you used changeling-zerglings in your map, which die after taking > 1 damage.
(I actually didn't know that <1 damage doesn't kill changelings, that is pretty funny to know lol)
Wow lol, thank you.
I learned by just going through everything that interested me in the data editor made by blizzard and the left 2 die mode. Rest I taught myself through experimentation.
Contribute to the wiki (Wiki button at top of page) Considered easy altering of the unit textures?
https://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/resources/tutorials/179654-data-actor-events-message-texture-select-by-id
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