I'm trying to create a beam from one unit to another so that I could turn it on and off by using triggers. I've tried looking at how medic and void ray beams are done but the best I've managed so far is creating a new beam and destroying the old one every 0.5 seconds.
There's also an issue with the impact site ops. I'm creating the beam between two Motherships, and trying to set the impact site ops to attach to the target's center, and most of the time it does that, but at random it attaches to one of the "corners" of the Mothership instead of its center and I have no idea why.
I'd rather someone explained this from scratch than showing what I've done so far, because it's too screwed up to try to repair.
The behavior is added when a player uses the Upgrade Automated Refinery on the unit. Not all refineries are upgraded at a time, so it needs to be a behavior.
I have a Refinery that can be upgraded into an Automated Refinery, but instead of morphing the Refinery to another unit, I'm giving it a behavior and doing a model swap on the unit's main actor. However, this doesn't change its death model.
I've disabled the actor's death model, and instead made a new Refinery Death actor that gets created whenever a Refinery dies. But I can't figure out how to make the Refinery Death actor swap its model based on whether the dying unit had the automated refinery behavior or not. I'm trying to use Validate Unit term to check it but it seems to fail every time.
Any ideas how to validate the unit who is dying in the new actor, or any other way of solving this problem? I can't morph the unit because it'd mess up my triggers.
I've been working on the map pretty much the whole time since the last post, and I've been updating my blog. I'm keeping logs of all the notable changes I make and occasionally posting some thoughts. Here are links to the articles I've posted so far:
Short version: I need a rock model that fits well in a grid with multiple copies of itself.
Long version...
I'm getting closer to completing CraftCraft, but the art assets could use some improvements. I'm currently using the rocks from the standard game, and they aren't as fit to their job as they could be. Mainly, the ore rocks don't currently look like resources. They just look like rocks. I've put a lot of effort into making the gameplay awesome, so I'm expecting good quality, well-textured models as well.
I've attached pictures of what the rocks currently look like in the map. The round brown rocks are iron ore, and the dark grey smaller rocks are just normal rocks that don't provide any resources. These two are the only types of rocks there currently are in the map.
Although this request is "just" for a rock, it plays a very important role in this map and should not be made in a rush.
Here's a video of a slightly out-dated version of the map:
Model & Texture Description
What I'd like to see is both of the rock types being roughly the same shape. They should be large like those brown rocks in the attached screenshots, but also not look like they're just put on the ground like they are now. They should look like they're partially in the ground, if you know what I mean.
The rocks should also better fill the space of the square tile they are in, so that there wouldn't be any visible gaps between them especially at the corners. They can partially overlap each other so that they can be slightly round and larger than the actual tile, but not too much. Their height should be lower than their width, a bit like those smaller grey rocks in the screenshots, so that it's still easy to see behind them.
In theory, models for the normal rock and the ore rock could use the same model, as long as the texture makes them look different enough. The iron ore rock should look like it's valuable, and not be overly realistic (because real iron ore just looks boring). Here is a reference picture of a rock that has spots of ore in it. I've been imagining it to have multiple wavy stripes of ore instead to make it look cooler. However, if you have better ideas, I'm all ears. I can also describe my vision in more detail if needed.
I'd like the rock model have multiple variations to make the map more interesting, as there are a lot of rocks in this map. However, there are a lot of limitations to this, because the rocks can't be too tall as they'd otherwise hide the rock that's behind them, and they can't be too weird-shaped because they'd not fit inside the square they are in.
I'm currently using the destructible rock death model, and it's probably good enough for the destruction of pretty much any rock, because the animation plays so fast and is very generic. It would be nice to have a custom death model and animation to work better with the custom rock model, but isn't absolutely necessary.
Teamwork
Before you go ahead and make a model, I'd like to talk to you first. Otherwise you might just end up wasting your time. I'd also like to have the possibility of modifications being made based on my feedback, and it might be a good idea to make the first version with just one variation, and only after it seems finished, more variations added to it. It'd also help (although not required) if you have an EU account so that I could show the map to you in-game.
If you're interested, I'd like to see some of the models you've made before. I wouldn't want to blindly ask for a model without knowing what to expect, because if I'm not happy with the results, I won't use it. This is why good communication during the process is important. And of course, you'll be properly credited for your work.
@Nerfpl: Go That'd just create more issues than it'd solve.
Edit: Yeah actually giving a behavior with the vehicle enter ability might work (not while the unit is moving towards the vehicle). I'll try it out. There is no issue with removing it because it's done using triggers. I'll just simply remove it when the unit exits the vehicle. Except that I can't really disable attack because then attack abilities wouldn't be copied...
Edit: Woot that worked. Now I just need to figure out how to make it disable auto attack but not attack itself... Maybe by disabling weapon or something.
Actually transport might be a good idea, the pausing/hiding thing has a few issues. But that is unrelated to this problem. I still need to be able to copy the order queue.
The problem also happens with auto acquiring attack, not just autocast repair.
I only want to not copy orders that were issued with autocast. Otherwise all of the unit's orders should be copied. If I didn't want it to copy any orders, then I wouldn't be doing it in the first place and I wouldn't have this problem.
I have a unit and a "vehicle" which the unit can enter. The vehicle is at first owned by a computer ally player, and when the player's unit casts an "Enter Vehicle" ability on it, a trigger catches the event. The player's unit is paused and hidden, and the player is given control of the vehicle. The unit's order queue is copied to the vehicle, and for the most part this works, but I have a problem with the unit's Repair ability which can be autocast.
If the player has given an order queue for the unit (for example: enter vehicle, move away), the trigger copies them correctly. However, if the player has not given the unit a queue, and there is a damaged structure nearby when the unit enters the vehicle, Repair autocast kicks in just a tick before the Enter Vehicle event is caught, and the repair autocast is automatically added to the unit's order queue, and is followed by a move order to move back to where the unit was when it started the autocast. Now, the vehicle doesn't have a Repair ability so it just ignores that, but it still moves to the point where the unit started the Repair autocast.
It goes as follows:
There's a damaged structure nearby.
Player right clicks on vehicle.
There's now only the Enter Vehicle order in the unit's queue
Unit casts Enter Vehicle on the vehicle.
Repair autocast is added to the unit's order queue.
Move back to where the autocast started is added to the unit's order queue.
The Enter Vehicle event is caught by the event manager.
Vehicle loops through the order queue of the unit:
Vehicle ignores the repair order because it doesn't have Repair
Vehicle moves to the point where the unit was when it started the Repair autocast order
I don't want step 10 to happen, but I do want the vehicle to copy the unit's orders that were given to the unit by the player. Everything else should be fine. Is there a way to check if a unit's order was done using autocast, for example? Or any better ideas? Maybe I could somehow add a "procrastinate" order to the unit when it casts the Enter Vehicle order if it doesn't have orders in its queue, so that the unit doesn't have time to autocast repair before the event is caught?
I have some ideas for more interesting vehicles than the siege tank. I probably won't even need to use it.
I decided to start posting progress updates on my blog, here: a1win.blogspot.com. Posting in this thread just feels like we're in some dark corner hidden from the general public... ^^
I'm still checking this thread but a blog seems like a better way to keep things nicely together.
Another video! The difficulty seems a bit too easy for singleplayer at the moment, and the map only gets really fun when there's a lot of pressure going on. Anyway, this should give you an idea of some (but not even close to all) of the improvements I've made!
Progress, yay! The length of the map is reaching two hours and I'm probably going to let it.
So, I reverted the resource system to the default SC2 resource system and it's working perfectly. The only resources I have at the moment are minerals, vespene gas, paristeel, and vanadium.
Paristeel and minerals are gained by mining stuff (you mine iron ore, which is then instantly converted into paristeel at the command center).
Vanadium is created over time at the Forge by combining minerals and paristeel and using a bit of power.
Vespene gas is harvested with Refineries, and vespene is required by Power Generators to generate power. It's also consumed by Perdition Turrets when firing their flamethrowers.
Minerals are still a bit odd resource as it's in many ways very similar to paristeel (both are mined and both are used for creating vanadium), except that minerals aren't used as a main construction material like paristeel is. Minerals are used for some upgrades, tools, and such, but they probably still need some more uses, especially something that they can be "spammed" for.
I think I've solved the issue with players not wanting to use Power Relays to create long cables, as it previously was more reasonable to use turrets as line connectors since you'd need a turret to protect the line anyway. But now, you can only attach one cable to a turret. Makes sense in a way, and solves the problem pretty efficiently. Now you'll probably want to use Power Relays that are protected by turrets if you want to connect two bases with a power line.
Siege tanks are quite boring. They pretty much work like this: Park the tank in the middle of a small outpost, set it to siege mode, come out to do stuff. When enemies approach, enter siege tank, wait for it to fire, enemies die, come out and do stuff. The tank could be better if it was possible to increase sight range... but unfortunately it isn't. I either need to think of something that makes the tanks more unique, or just replace them with a more interesting vehicle. I'm not too worried about this since I haven't started making new types of enemies yet. I'll get the overall gameplay working first so that I'll actually have something to release.
I added adjutant back from the beginning so that I can use her voice announcements for things like "research complete" and "base is under attack". I'll instead just have a "repair adjutant's scanner" objective, possibly time-based... there are already lots of interesting things to do, so this could easily be simply something you have to wait for. After the scanner is finished, the adjutant starts pinging points of interest in the map, such as zerg hatcheries and later on the main goals you need to get to (otherwise you'd most likely not find them except with very good luck). As for the main objectives, I have some pretty neat ideas but I'll talk about those later.
I'm thinking of reducing the number of resources that are used to build things down to 4 so that I could use the default resource system, which would be superior to my trigger based system. It'd mean I have to rework my entire resource system but I think it'll be worth it. It'd also make learning the game and keeping track of things during it easier, and more fun. I thought having a lot of different resources would be a must, but the gameplay turned out a lot more action based than I initially pictured.
Instead of having a lot of different rocks to mine, I should have more different kinds of objects you can find by mining. Like some kind of power-ups or "quest items" that provide you with something after turning in enough of them, and so on.
You mean the artifacts from singleplayer? Place them across the map, scattered far from each other, so that one of the last things the players need to do is to do a few long trips through the cave (after the artifacts have been pinpointed somehow).
I've been thinking of letting the players to create / repair an adjutant, but haven't figured out how they'd do it. It'd be a major thing, so it couldn't really be a choice between it and the other researches, for example. How about just have it as a timed event? It's being repaired in the Command Center the whole time, and at some point it just pops online and starts guiding the players in various ways (opening the entire minimap, pinpointing hatcheries, rare resource spawns, and the protoss ruins and artifacts towards the end). Or any better ideas for how it'd happen?
Command Center is a constructable structure just like any other. Multiple Command Centers means shorter travel time to return cargo.
An idea for the end game is to have some ruined protoss structures lying around the map, which need to be repaired and powered up. The final goal could be gaining access to a waygate that's hidden somewhere in the map, and spend quite a bit of time and resources to get it operational.
I'm at least going to make the map "complete" so that it has a proper victory condition before a release, and make the learning curve at the beginning a bit easier. I can't say when that will be, but most likely at least a week or two more.
0
I'm trying to create a beam from one unit to another so that I could turn it on and off by using triggers. I've tried looking at how medic and void ray beams are done but the best I've managed so far is creating a new beam and destroying the old one every 0.5 seconds.
There's also an issue with the impact site ops. I'm creating the beam between two Motherships, and trying to set the impact site ops to attach to the target's center, and most of the time it does that, but at random it attaches to one of the "corners" of the Mothership instead of its center and I have no idea why.
I'd rather someone explained this from scratch than showing what I've done so far, because it's too screwed up to try to repair.
0
Thanks, that worked. A combination of UnitDeathCustomize and Status Set, just like it is for Command Center (I took a look at that and replicated it).
0
The behavior is added when a player uses the Upgrade Automated Refinery on the unit. Not all refineries are upgraded at a time, so it needs to be a behavior.
How does Status Set event work?
0
I have a Refinery that can be upgraded into an Automated Refinery, but instead of morphing the Refinery to another unit, I'm giving it a behavior and doing a model swap on the unit's main actor. However, this doesn't change its death model.
I've disabled the actor's death model, and instead made a new Refinery Death actor that gets created whenever a Refinery dies. But I can't figure out how to make the Refinery Death actor swap its model based on whether the dying unit had the automated refinery behavior or not. I'm trying to use Validate Unit term to check it but it seems to fail every time.
Any ideas how to validate the unit who is dying in the new actor, or any other way of solving this problem? I can't morph the unit because it'd mess up my triggers.
0
I've been working on the map pretty much the whole time since the last post, and I've been updating my blog. I'm keeping logs of all the notable changes I make and occasionally posting some thoughts. Here are links to the articles I've posted so far:
0
Hello,
Short version: I need a rock model that fits well in a grid with multiple copies of itself.
Long version...
I'm getting closer to completing CraftCraft, but the art assets could use some improvements. I'm currently using the rocks from the standard game, and they aren't as fit to their job as they could be. Mainly, the ore rocks don't currently look like resources. They just look like rocks. I've put a lot of effort into making the gameplay awesome, so I'm expecting good quality, well-textured models as well.
I've attached pictures of what the rocks currently look like in the map. The round brown rocks are iron ore, and the dark grey smaller rocks are just normal rocks that don't provide any resources. These two are the only types of rocks there currently are in the map.
Although this request is "just" for a rock, it plays a very important role in this map and should not be made in a rush.
Here's a video of a slightly out-dated version of the map:
Model & Texture Description
What I'd like to see is both of the rock types being roughly the same shape. They should be large like those brown rocks in the attached screenshots, but also not look like they're just put on the ground like they are now. They should look like they're partially in the ground, if you know what I mean.
The rocks should also better fill the space of the square tile they are in, so that there wouldn't be any visible gaps between them especially at the corners. They can partially overlap each other so that they can be slightly round and larger than the actual tile, but not too much. Their height should be lower than their width, a bit like those smaller grey rocks in the screenshots, so that it's still easy to see behind them.
In theory, models for the normal rock and the ore rock could use the same model, as long as the texture makes them look different enough. The iron ore rock should look like it's valuable, and not be overly realistic (because real iron ore just looks boring). Here is a reference picture of a rock that has spots of ore in it. I've been imagining it to have multiple wavy stripes of ore instead to make it look cooler. However, if you have better ideas, I'm all ears. I can also describe my vision in more detail if needed.
I'd like the rock model have multiple variations to make the map more interesting, as there are a lot of rocks in this map. However, there are a lot of limitations to this, because the rocks can't be too tall as they'd otherwise hide the rock that's behind them, and they can't be too weird-shaped because they'd not fit inside the square they are in.
I'm currently using the destructible rock death model, and it's probably good enough for the destruction of pretty much any rock, because the animation plays so fast and is very generic. It would be nice to have a custom death model and animation to work better with the custom rock model, but isn't absolutely necessary.
Teamwork
Before you go ahead and make a model, I'd like to talk to you first. Otherwise you might just end up wasting your time. I'd also like to have the possibility of modifications being made based on my feedback, and it might be a good idea to make the first version with just one variation, and only after it seems finished, more variations added to it. It'd also help (although not required) if you have an EU account so that I could show the map to you in-game.
If you're interested, I'd like to see some of the models you've made before. I wouldn't want to blindly ask for a model without knowing what to expect, because if I'm not happy with the results, I won't use it. This is why good communication during the process is important. And of course, you'll be properly credited for your work.
0
@Nerfpl: Go That'd just create more issues than it'd solve.
Edit: Yeah actually giving a behavior with the vehicle enter ability might work (not while the unit is moving towards the vehicle). I'll try it out. There is no issue with removing it because it's done using triggers. I'll just simply remove it when the unit exits the vehicle. Except that I can't really disable attack because then attack abilities wouldn't be copied...
Edit: Woot that worked. Now I just need to figure out how to make it disable auto attack but not attack itself... Maybe by disabling weapon or something.
Fixed! I made the behavior set the Passive flag.
0
Actually transport might be a good idea, the pausing/hiding thing has a few issues. But that is unrelated to this problem. I still need to be able to copy the order queue.
The problem also happens with auto acquiring attack, not just autocast repair.
I only want to not copy orders that were issued with autocast. Otherwise all of the unit's orders should be copied. If I didn't want it to copy any orders, then I wouldn't be doing it in the first place and I wouldn't have this problem.
0
I have a unit and a "vehicle" which the unit can enter. The vehicle is at first owned by a computer ally player, and when the player's unit casts an "Enter Vehicle" ability on it, a trigger catches the event. The player's unit is paused and hidden, and the player is given control of the vehicle. The unit's order queue is copied to the vehicle, and for the most part this works, but I have a problem with the unit's Repair ability which can be autocast.
If the player has given an order queue for the unit (for example: enter vehicle, move away), the trigger copies them correctly. However, if the player has not given the unit a queue, and there is a damaged structure nearby when the unit enters the vehicle, Repair autocast kicks in just a tick before the Enter Vehicle event is caught, and the repair autocast is automatically added to the unit's order queue, and is followed by a move order to move back to where the unit was when it started the autocast. Now, the vehicle doesn't have a Repair ability so it just ignores that, but it still moves to the point where the unit started the Repair autocast.
It goes as follows:
I don't want step 10 to happen, but I do want the vehicle to copy the unit's orders that were given to the unit by the player. Everything else should be fine. Is there a way to check if a unit's order was done using autocast, for example? Or any better ideas? Maybe I could somehow add a "procrastinate" order to the unit when it casts the Enter Vehicle order if it doesn't have orders in its queue, so that the unit doesn't have time to autocast repair before the event is caught?
0
I have some ideas for more interesting vehicles than the siege tank. I probably won't even need to use it.
I decided to start posting progress updates on my blog, here: a1win.blogspot.com. Posting in this thread just feels like we're in some dark corner hidden from the general public... ^^
I'm still checking this thread but a blog seems like a better way to keep things nicely together.
0
Another video! The difficulty seems a bit too easy for singleplayer at the moment, and the map only gets really fun when there's a lot of pressure going on. Anyway, this should give you an idea of some (but not even close to all) of the improvements I've made!
0
Progress, yay! The length of the map is reaching two hours and I'm probably going to let it.
So, I reverted the resource system to the default SC2 resource system and it's working perfectly. The only resources I have at the moment are minerals, vespene gas, paristeel, and vanadium.
I think I've solved the issue with players not wanting to use Power Relays to create long cables, as it previously was more reasonable to use turrets as line connectors since you'd need a turret to protect the line anyway. But now, you can only attach one cable to a turret. Makes sense in a way, and solves the problem pretty efficiently. Now you'll probably want to use Power Relays that are protected by turrets if you want to connect two bases with a power line.
Siege tanks are quite boring. They pretty much work like this: Park the tank in the middle of a small outpost, set it to siege mode, come out to do stuff. When enemies approach, enter siege tank, wait for it to fire, enemies die, come out and do stuff. The tank could be better if it was possible to increase sight range... but unfortunately it isn't. I either need to think of something that makes the tanks more unique, or just replace them with a more interesting vehicle. I'm not too worried about this since I haven't started making new types of enemies yet. I'll get the overall gameplay working first so that I'll actually have something to release.
I added adjutant back from the beginning so that I can use her voice announcements for things like "research complete" and "base is under attack". I'll instead just have a "repair adjutant's scanner" objective, possibly time-based... there are already lots of interesting things to do, so this could easily be simply something you have to wait for. After the scanner is finished, the adjutant starts pinging points of interest in the map, such as zerg hatcheries and later on the main goals you need to get to (otherwise you'd most likely not find them except with very good luck). As for the main objectives, I have some pretty neat ideas but I'll talk about those later.
0
I'm thinking of reducing the number of resources that are used to build things down to 4 so that I could use the default resource system, which would be superior to my trigger based system. It'd mean I have to rework my entire resource system but I think it'll be worth it. It'd also make learning the game and keeping track of things during it easier, and more fun. I thought having a lot of different resources would be a must, but the gameplay turned out a lot more action based than I initially pictured.
Instead of having a lot of different rocks to mine, I should have more different kinds of objects you can find by mining. Like some kind of power-ups or "quest items" that provide you with something after turning in enough of them, and so on.
0
You mean the artifacts from singleplayer? Place them across the map, scattered far from each other, so that one of the last things the players need to do is to do a few long trips through the cave (after the artifacts have been pinpointed somehow).
I've been thinking of letting the players to create / repair an adjutant, but haven't figured out how they'd do it. It'd be a major thing, so it couldn't really be a choice between it and the other researches, for example. How about just have it as a timed event? It's being repaired in the Command Center the whole time, and at some point it just pops online and starts guiding the players in various ways (opening the entire minimap, pinpointing hatcheries, rare resource spawns, and the protoss ruins and artifacts towards the end). Or any better ideas for how it'd happen?
0
Command Center is a constructable structure just like any other. Multiple Command Centers means shorter travel time to return cargo.
An idea for the end game is to have some ruined protoss structures lying around the map, which need to be repaired and powered up. The final goal could be gaining access to a waygate that's hidden somewhere in the map, and spend quite a bit of time and resources to get it operational.
I'm at least going to make the map "complete" so that it has a proper victory condition before a release, and make the learning curve at the beginning a bit easier. I can't say when that will be, but most likely at least a week or two more.