Kinetics are physics applications that offer unique ways of giving units interesting physics effects. Some great examples of those are found here.
Remember you can right click an image to see the bigger original file if these are too small for your liking.
Setting up a Plan
First, you need to decide what you want to do with your kinetic. For this tutorial, I'm going to do a very basic Kinetic that only applies to one pre-placed unit on the map. However, you may decide that you want yours to apply to any unit created.
Here, I have placed a Raven which I will want to rotate around the marine, and a turret which will follow the marine.
Creating the Kinetic
Open up the Data editor.
Go to the Kinetics tab which can be found using the + icon under Advanced Game Data. Add a new Kinetic. You will notice all the different types you can make.
Follow: Just like it sounds, follows the target.
Rotate: Orbits the target.
Sequence: Add multiple Kinetics to an order which will be executed in the order you put them.
Set: Set multiple Kinetics to apply at once.
Translate: Move directionally, nice for things like WSAD movement.
For this tutorial, I'm only going to use Follow and Rotate. So create one of each of those to start.
Understanding the Fields
Click on the follow Kinetic you just made to see some fields.
You'll notice some similar fields to what you'll find in behaviors and effects. I'll assume you know how those ones like chance work. The main field you'll use in the follow Kinetic is the Where field which is circled in the picture above. this field will open the popup shown in the picture. Here, you can set which unit you want to have followed, or set the kinetic to activate during a certain effect. This is particularly useful when creating kinetics that will be applied to multiple units.
For this tutorial, we do not need to change any of these values, as the default works for us, so let's move on.
If you get these messages from the picture above, like I do, you'll have to do a little work around which I will show below.
You'll notice some new fields in this rotate Kinetic (All set in degrees):
Pitch: x-axis
Roll: y-axis
Yaw: z-axis
There are also a few other fields you'll most likely use:
Duration: How long it takes to perform the pitch/roll/yaw
Cycles: If you do not want the Kinetic happening forever, you can set it to a set number of times. Be careful though, you also will have to have an effect to remove the behavior we will create later, or it will still do this Kinetic forever.
If you have the error I have, you won't be able to edit those fields which are important for the direction of movement. To fix this, click the View Raw Data option at the top which is circled in the above picture. Then you can edit those fields and press enter to save, before taking off the raw data view.
In this tutorial, we want the raven to rotate around the marine, which means that we will want to rotate around the z-axis, or the Yaw. Set it to 360 to equate to a full circle, then set the Duration field to a small number like 10 seconds or less. This will determine how fast the raven moves.
Effects
Now we have our Kinetics set up, so we need effects to actually apply them. Open the Effects tab in the Data editor and create a new effect.
You'll notice there is an effect type called Apply Kinetic. You will need one of these for each Kinetic you want to apply.
Selected in the picture above, the Kinetic field will have to be set to the accompanying Kinetic which we made in the previous step. That is all we need for the effects.
Behaviors
Now we will need behaviors for each Kinetic to be able to actually give the Kinetic to a unit so that it has instructions.
It does not matter whether it is a Buff or Attribute since we are not editing any stats of the unit in this example. So create a behavior of either type for each Kinetic.
You will notice in the picture above, we will need to edit the Effect Initial property of the behavior and set it to the appropriate effect from the ones we just made.
You may also want to edit the Duration or Effect Final instead to meet your own needs. For this example, we will leave those empty. Additionally, if you are going for a Kinetic that is applied to every instance of a specific unit (like every marine on the map), now is when you can add this behavior to the unit through the Data editor, or add the effect to an ability, depending on your needs.
Triggers
Now we have all the Data we need. For situations where you only want a single unit to have a Kinetic, we're going to need Triggers. Open the Trigger editor.
We will need to add the behaviors we made to the correct units using Triggers. Depending on your situation, you can fiddle with the event.
Under Actions, create a Add Behavior action.
Look at the picture above for help on what we need from this action.
Behavior: The behavior for the Kinetic you want applied.
Unit: The unit that you want to do the kinetic (the unit you want to do the following for example).
Caster: The Target for where the Kinetic should function from (the unit/location you want to rotate around for example)
Interesting note: You can do both a follow and a rotate to have the orbiting unit face the same direction as the target as the target moves.
For this example, we only need 2 actions, one for each situation we had planned. Which will look like the picture below.
Final Result:
Video Version of this Tutorial:
Below is also a copy of the map used for this tutorial.
Kinetics
Kinetics are physics applications that offer unique ways of giving units interesting physics effects. Some great examples of those are found here.
Remember you can right click an image to see the bigger original file if these are too small for your liking.
Setting up a Plan
First, you need to decide what you want to do with your kinetic. For this tutorial, I'm going to do a very basic Kinetic that only applies to one pre-placed unit on the map. However, you may decide that you want yours to apply to any unit created.
Here, I have placed a Raven which I will want to rotate around the marine, and a turret which will follow the marine.
Creating the Kinetic
Open up the Data editor.
Go to the Kinetics tab which can be found using the + icon under Advanced Game Data. Add a new Kinetic. You will notice all the different types you can make.
For this tutorial, I'm only going to use Follow and Rotate. So create one of each of those to start.
Understanding the Fields
Click on the follow Kinetic you just made to see some fields.
You'll notice some similar fields to what you'll find in behaviors and effects. I'll assume you know how those ones like chance work. The main field you'll use in the follow Kinetic is the Where field which is circled in the picture above. this field will open the popup shown in the picture. Here, you can set which unit you want to have followed, or set the kinetic to activate during a certain effect. This is particularly useful when creating kinetics that will be applied to multiple units.
For this tutorial, we do not need to change any of these values, as the default works for us, so let's move on.
If you get these messages from the picture above, like I do, you'll have to do a little work around which I will show below.
You'll notice some new fields in this rotate Kinetic (All set in degrees):
There are also a few other fields you'll most likely use:
If you have the error I have, you won't be able to edit those fields which are important for the direction of movement. To fix this, click the View Raw Data option at the top which is circled in the above picture. Then you can edit those fields and press enter to save, before taking off the raw data view.
In this tutorial, we want the raven to rotate around the marine, which means that we will want to rotate around the z-axis, or the Yaw. Set it to 360 to equate to a full circle, then set the Duration field to a small number like 10 seconds or less. This will determine how fast the raven moves.
Effects
Now we have our Kinetics set up, so we need effects to actually apply them. Open the Effects tab in the Data editor and create a new effect.
You'll notice there is an effect type called Apply Kinetic. You will need one of these for each Kinetic you want to apply.
Selected in the picture above, the Kinetic field will have to be set to the accompanying Kinetic which we made in the previous step. That is all we need for the effects.
Behaviors
Now we will need behaviors for each Kinetic to be able to actually give the Kinetic to a unit so that it has instructions.
It does not matter whether it is a Buff or Attribute since we are not editing any stats of the unit in this example. So create a behavior of either type for each Kinetic.
You will notice in the picture above, we will need to edit the Effect Initial property of the behavior and set it to the appropriate effect from the ones we just made.
You may also want to edit the Duration or Effect Final instead to meet your own needs. For this example, we will leave those empty. Additionally, if you are going for a Kinetic that is applied to every instance of a specific unit (like every marine on the map), now is when you can add this behavior to the unit through the Data editor, or add the effect to an ability, depending on your needs.
Triggers
Now we have all the Data we need. For situations where you only want a single unit to have a Kinetic, we're going to need Triggers. Open the Trigger editor.
We will need to add the behaviors we made to the correct units using Triggers. Depending on your situation, you can fiddle with the event.
Under Actions, create a Add Behavior action.
Look at the picture above for help on what we need from this action.
Interesting note: You can do both a follow and a rotate to have the orbiting unit face the same direction as the target as the target moves.
For this example, we only need 2 actions, one for each situation we had planned. Which will look like the picture below.
Final Result:
Video Version of this Tutorial:
Below is also a copy of the map used for this tutorial.
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