Sounds like there's more control than I had initially assumed. Thanks for the tips.
I would love to have certain doodads animate only when players enter a certain region around them, but my issue is that I don't think that's possible for some of the models I'm using. For example, the lights don't have variations where they are identical except for the light being turned off, so I don't think I could have that sort of mechanic in place for the map. Another cool thing would be to have some of the sewer floodlight assets only turn when player units are nearby, having them return to their default facing direction when the player's units leave the radius, but that probably wouldn't work because modifying the angle of that doodad would also modify the direction of its base and not just the light on top.
Should still be possible. I wrote a tutorial on the subject, but the short version is that there are actors designed specifically for this. The Region type actors are actors that configured to do searches for other actors, and then, using Query Response actors, direct actor messages at the actors that are found.
For example, this is how the Nuke makes trees light on fire. It create a Circle region actor and does a query, which filters only for doodad type actors, and also ones with the _Tree alias. It then sends the Death message, which triggers them to play their burn death animation.
So in the case of the light, you could do creative messages that shrink or have the model play its off animation (if it has one).
As for the lights bending and facing towards the player: This MIGHT be doable, but it does require to learn how something works that I have not yet learned, which is how the game procedurally redoes a model's bones to track to another actor, which is how the Spine Crawlers work. The actual spine crawler attack missile is invisible, but its location is used to pull the spine crawler head.
As for animating when a player unit approaches, you would basically filter for 2 things, that it is a Unit type actor, and also based on alliance state. Also, all region actors provide the capability to have messages be sent when an actor enters the region, exits the region, becomes the closest to the center, stops being the closest to center. And these all can be independent of each other. This mostly comes from the Query Persistent, which makes it an ongoing query of the region, which can move since you can just host it on another actor. In my tutorial I made all the tree doodads around a marine increase in size when it got close, and turn pink if it was the closest to the marine.
Also, there are many other actors that can be used to be used to manage other actors. Monitor actors basically check actor terms every so often (you control how often) and based on which one is true, can shift states. The shifting states can then be used to dispatch messages. This is how fires/smoke appear on terran buildings, it has 4 states that are each running a validator based on the build health. Based on the state, it destroys the old smoke/fire and creates the new ones.
Also, look at WoL mission 3. When a wave is about to come in, the bullhorns get an alarm light enabled.
Go play Antioch Chronicles Remastered!
Also, coming soon, Antioch Episode 3: Thoughts in Chaos!
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Should still be possible. I wrote a tutorial on the subject, but the short version is that there are actors designed specifically for this. The Region type actors are actors that configured to do searches for other actors, and then, using Query Response actors, direct actor messages at the actors that are found.
For example, this is how the Nuke makes trees light on fire. It create a Circle region actor and does a query, which filters only for doodad type actors, and also ones with the _Tree alias. It then sends the Death message, which triggers them to play their burn death animation.
So in the case of the light, you could do creative messages that shrink or have the model play its off animation (if it has one).
As for the lights bending and facing towards the player: This MIGHT be doable, but it does require to learn how something works that I have not yet learned, which is how the game procedurally redoes a model's bones to track to another actor, which is how the Spine Crawlers work. The actual spine crawler attack missile is invisible, but its location is used to pull the spine crawler head.
As for animating when a player unit approaches, you would basically filter for 2 things, that it is a Unit type actor, and also based on alliance state. Also, all region actors provide the capability to have messages be sent when an actor enters the region, exits the region, becomes the closest to the center, stops being the closest to center. And these all can be independent of each other. This mostly comes from the Query Persistent, which makes it an ongoing query of the region, which can move since you can just host it on another actor. In my tutorial I made all the tree doodads around a marine increase in size when it got close, and turn pink if it was the closest to the marine.
Also, there are many other actors that can be used to be used to manage other actors. Monitor actors basically check actor terms every so often (you control how often) and based on which one is true, can shift states. The shifting states can then be used to dispatch messages. This is how fires/smoke appear on terran buildings, it has 4 states that are each running a validator based on the build health. Based on the state, it destroys the old smoke/fire and creates the new ones.