SC2Mapster

Hello all who are reading this. I dont now if this is the proper place to post this but here is what i am hoping for, i would like someone who is knowledgable about the data editor to help me through the intermediate and advanced stuff. I have been working in the editor only a few months and i have come to really like the data editor part, however i am having alot of difficulty expanding my knowledge without a guide and i am hoping someone would be willing to spare a bit of there time to help me learn the more davanced stuff, especialy actors,movers,effects and abilities. I appreciate your time.

I dont believe so, this is where i get my primary source of info.

Let me also know your questions and I'll also try to answer them :)

Thank you for your replies, i guess one thing i would like to learn more about is site operations and movers, for example i made an ability shoot a missile mover at a target but instead of suiciding when impacting the target it seems to suicide a little bit before hitting the target so it looks a bit strange.

@Drakewyvern: Go

There's also a field on the Launch Missile effect ("Impact Range") intended to induce "premature" impacts in gameplay terms. To my knowledge only the Void Sphere ability on Zeratul's Void Seeker ship actually uses it, to split the missile into several smaller ones. The usual offenders are still shield radii (and bad impact maps if you're using "cut" models)

For SiteOps you can usually distinguish between two inofficial "types":

• Those that perform necessary identification, of which you'll only ever use the existing presets, attachment and scope-reading being the main members, these essentially work as a "stay here" sign for the host actor.
• Those that perform other (mostly geometric) operations and will often be tailored to a specific setup. Local Offset, Explicit Rotation, Random Point and Rotator are commonly used. These can also be chained in a meaningful way (unlike, say, AttachCenter and AttachOrigin), which can be used to create custom animations: A simple example would be a SOpRotator followed by a SOpLocalOffset, which creates an orbiting motion.

Movers, from my experience at least, are mostly a trial-and-error affair. Parabolic and Ballistic types are rarely used but can make rather nice "realistic" trajectories for those who don't like homing boulders, acid globs, spikes/spines, broodlings and the like.

Instead almost all missiles used in RTS maps end in a Guided phase, which behaves like your stock homing missile should. You can limit the turn rate and max speed to allow targets to escape (old Raven HSM), but these generally guarantee a hit, which is why they're used for regular attacks so much.

The Throw phase is mainly used to launch missiles at an angle, especially for barrage attacks so they look more impressive, but also for the Phoenix attack which curves around half the ship. These can also be chained or activated mid-flight, but this is generally avoided specifically because it produces sharp turns in mid-flight.

Unless you want a laser grid the next important part is "blending" between phases. This somehow interpolates between the trajectories of the "pure" phases to produce a smooth transition. The textbook example is a Throw phase followed by a Guided phase: Assume the Throw is perpendicular to the direct line of sight, once the Guided phase starts the missile will make a near-90° turn and beeline for the target. If you instead add some blend time to the Throw the missile will start curving towards the target a little sooner and in a smooth arc like a real-life missile would. While the differences can be hard to notice, as a rule of thumb on Blend Types: Linear is a smooth transition, Exponential ramps up very quickly and Logarithmic increases very slowly.