Create a missile launch effect (launch a single "volley"), attach your missile object to this launch effect.
Add the missile launch effect to your persistent effect and make it fire every X times (where X = the number of 'volleys").
Attach the persistent effect to your ability and Voila!
Arcane Missiles from WoW.
N.B Obviously you will need to get the timings right (e.g. channel duration = duration of persistent effect, etc). But that is your skeleton right there.
I dont know what the Sorts+ field is but you could try setting it up as a weapon and just have it fire as you move. I think I saw something that would let you hide the weapon from the UI if you want, but that part Im not sure about.
Aye, setting up a weapon would be easy, but I need to make it an ability specifically.
The reason for that is that its actually a "cast time" ability. Currently, you can only attach "cast phases" to abilites, and not weapons (at least not in a way that shows the casting bar on top of the unit).
This is why I chose an autocasted ability, the only problem now is to get it acquiring targets like the "Attack" ability does.
Im almost certain the Ability - Sorts+ is the way to go, along with the marker objects. Someone must have played around with that stuff.
To add some fuel to this question, here is another way to look at the problem.
I am basically trying to get an "Effect - Target" ability (which is autocasting) to mimic the targeting behavior of the default "Attack" ability that almost all units have. This behavior being:
1. When in range, attack nearest target.
2. When instructed (by right clicking on an enemy unit), switch targets to "right clicked" unit and continue attacking that unit till it dies.
Currently, the only way I have found to control the targetting behavior of abilities is through the "Ability - Target Sorts+" field in the ability object. However, the trick is getting the ability to remember (by setting a marker?) the unit I right clicked on and continue casting the autocast onto that target till it dies.
Currently, when my unit is in range, he targets a random target (say nearest). Then I right click on an enemy and the ability just fires once on that target, then goes back to targeting its nearest and/or some other random target. What I need it to do is to continue attacking the "right clicked" target till it dies and only then go back to attacking the nearest or random.
I wanted to get some insight into the Ability - Target Sorts+ field.
It can be found on most abilities.
I know it has something to do with the Target Sorts data type.
Let me explain a bit of context of what I'm trying to do, and how I'm going about it. Maybe someone can help from there.
Basically, I have an autocast ability (like a Fireball spell). What I want, is that the Fireballing unit should attack its nearest enemy (TSDistance) unless I specifically tell it to attack a specific unit (TSMarker?). It should keep attacking the unit till its dead, then go back to fireballing its closest target.
So kinda like the basic attack ability.
Right now what its doing is that when I right click on the unit I want killed, it will throw 1 fireball at that unit, then it will change target to some other unit. I want it so that when I right click on a unit, it will keep fireballing that unit till its dead and only then move onto another target.
Now I know this has something to do with target sorts and the TSMarkers (perhaps I need to set the marker for the unit somewhere?). Was wondering if anyone else has messed with Target Sorts for target acquisition in this way, or if anyone has any other thoughts.
a player or unit who left the range of the aura, didn't lose it.
This is caused by the duration of the behavior attached to the aura. For auras where you want to have the unit lose the aura as soon as he is out of range of it, set the behavior duration to be very small (of the behavior that the aura is applying to units).
Any base ability can be made autocast by setting its flag in the ability fields. You will need to create some validators for it, but other than that, you don't need to do anything special (unless you want to get into the realm of having the unit target stuff with the ability in a specific way, in which case you would need to get into target sorts etc. But since your ability is just an autocast on self, you don't need to worry about that).
About your second question, there are multiple ways to have a unit randomly cast one of his abilities, though for the sake of simplicity, I would suggest having just one ability with numerous effects that are randomly fired, i.e. the ability's effect field can be a set with all the effects of all the other abilities the unit would randomly pick from. Set a random number list which will fire one of them only if the random number generator spits out a specific value range.
e.g. 1-25 : Effect of Ability 1
26-50 : Effect of Ability 2
etc...
Naturally, there are other ways to do this, but I'm not sure about how confident you feel with the data editor for me to go into those explanations.
Someone needs to make a tutorial on effect-markers and target sorts. As many of you already know, they help when creating autocast single target abilities that will keep casting on a target after it has been 'marked' by right clicking on it.
Many people have asked how to do this but I just don't have the time to go over markers and target sorts and how to use them to get a unit to keep firing on the same target without using buffs and area searches.
So hopefully if someone gets time, they can make a tutorial on effect-markers and target sorts.
Inconsistent model/animation and actors is, from my experience, largely due to incorrect settings in the model actor's BSD animation set and timings (i.e. its Birth Stand Death animations).
Sometimes models don't have a Stand animation or sometimes they don't have a death animation, so what happens is that for the time period where it should be playing its death animation (for example) it sits there waiting for the animation to play but it never does.
This loop holds for a while until it automatically clears, however, if the actor was asked to play again between the time it was stuck and it auto-cleared, the actor won't play any new requested animation (which is probably why it appears to be "randomly" failing).
The way to fix this issue is to manually control the BSD set, either through manually entering lifecycle timings or through other events. Though without having more information, it is hard to tell that you are suffering from this problem and not something totally different.
You have to use markers and target sorts. The explanation of what both are and how they can be used is a little involved for me to get into here, perhaps someone can write a tutorial about them since both are very powerful for the purpose you both are describing, i.e. controlling what and how a unit attacks things.
Unfortunately I don't have the time right now to write the tutorial myself. You two should go to the tutorials section and request a tutorial on Markers and Target Sorts.
A quick jist of it is that you can make abilities/effects/buffs etc place "markers" on units, and then control how some other ability/effect/weapon etc pick their targets in relation to the markers set. You can use it for stuff like making sure a particular weapon/effect only fires at a particular target once before moving on to another, or have a particular unit fire an ability at the same target again and again (for things like autocast damage abilities).
I'm making a knockback spell and it all works, but the knockback is really slow and I've no idea how to increase the knocback speed.
Change the minimum speed of the unit being knocked. This can be done with by applying a behavior to the unit (of type: Buff) upon start and changing the minimum speed field.
You can find this field:
Behavior - Modfication+ field of the behavior
Movement tab
Movement speed minimum field
Increasing the value will increase the speed of the knockback. When the knockback is over (and the behavior fades) the unit will return to its normal minimum speed automatically.
@IskatuMesk: Go
Theoretically, yes (with a bit of vector math). Though I don't think its necessary, especially since the center attachment point already exists in the WoW models.
The way it is being done now (at least from what I can see from a cursory glance of the source code), is by just mapping specific WoW attachment id's to their respective SC2 names. This really is the best way to do it. It is simple and doesn't require math (making the overall process much faster).
The only thing we are missing is knowing which specific WoW attachment id maps to the SC2 center one, e.g. we know the WoW attachment called "Base" is the SC2 attachment "Ref_Origin". I'm sure that we will eventually find out what the WoW attachment is that maps to "Ref_Center" (my money is on either "Belly" or "Spell Impact", though I would have to investigate it further to be sure).
For now, we can just use a temporary WoW attachment that we know maps to a similar region in the model (middle-ish) and use that as our Center, which is why I proposed we can use the "Front Hit Region", since we don't need 2 Ref_Target attachments in SC2.
What I have started thinking about now is about all those extra "Ref_Hardpoint" attachments that are getting sent through as well. I wonder how much space we can save on filesize if we thin out the ones we don't really need. Does anyone know what kind of % of final filesize the attachment data for a single attachment takes? Who knows, maybe if we thin out the number of attachments the file is trying to store, we might be able to reduce the final filesize of a single m3 export.
Though I guess optimization of the exporter process is still a long way away :)
0
@MangledMind: Go
Create an ability, make it channeled.
Create a persistent effect.
Create a missile launch effect (launch a single "volley"), attach your missile object to this launch effect.
Add the missile launch effect to your persistent effect and make it fire every X times (where X = the number of 'volleys").
Attach the persistent effect to your ability and Voila! Arcane Missiles from WoW.
N.B Obviously you will need to get the timings right (e.g. channel duration = duration of persistent effect, etc). But that is your skeleton right there.
0
Aye, setting up a weapon would be easy, but I need to make it an ability specifically.
The reason for that is that its actually a "cast time" ability. Currently, you can only attach "cast phases" to abilites, and not weapons (at least not in a way that shows the casting bar on top of the unit).
This is why I chose an autocasted ability, the only problem now is to get it acquiring targets like the "Attack" ability does.
Im almost certain the Ability - Sorts+ is the way to go, along with the marker objects. Someone must have played around with that stuff.
0
Really?
No one has any idea on this? Interesting...
Either no one understands what I'm asking, or everyone is really stumped by this.
0
To add some fuel to this question, here is another way to look at the problem.
I am basically trying to get an "Effect - Target" ability (which is autocasting) to mimic the targeting behavior of the default "Attack" ability that almost all units have. This behavior being:
1. When in range, attack nearest target.
2. When instructed (by right clicking on an enemy unit), switch targets to "right clicked" unit and continue attacking that unit till it dies.
Currently, the only way I have found to control the targetting behavior of abilities is through the "Ability - Target Sorts+" field in the ability object. However, the trick is getting the ability to remember (by setting a marker?) the unit I right clicked on and continue casting the autocast onto that target till it dies.
Currently, when my unit is in range, he targets a random target (say nearest). Then I right click on an enemy and the ability just fires once on that target, then goes back to targeting its nearest and/or some other random target. What I need it to do is to continue attacking the "right clicked" target till it dies and only then go back to attacking the nearest or random.
Insights, inputs, ideas all welcome.
0
Its been about a week. Anyone got any ideas on this?
0
Hello all.
I wanted to get some insight into the Ability - Target Sorts+ field.
It can be found on most abilities.
I know it has something to do with the Target Sorts data type.
Let me explain a bit of context of what I'm trying to do, and how I'm going about it. Maybe someone can help from there.
Basically, I have an autocast ability (like a Fireball spell). What I want, is that the Fireballing unit should attack its nearest enemy (TSDistance) unless I specifically tell it to attack a specific unit (TSMarker?). It should keep attacking the unit till its dead, then go back to fireballing its closest target.
So kinda like the basic attack ability.
Right now what its doing is that when I right click on the unit I want killed, it will throw 1 fireball at that unit, then it will change target to some other unit. I want it so that when I right click on a unit, it will keep fireballing that unit till its dead and only then move onto another target.
Now I know this has something to do with target sorts and the TSMarkers (perhaps I need to set the marker for the unit somewhere?). Was wondering if anyone else has messed with Target Sorts for target acquisition in this way, or if anyone has any other thoughts.
Thanks!
0
This is caused by the duration of the behavior attached to the aura. For auras where you want to have the unit lose the aura as soon as he is out of range of it, set the behavior duration to be very small (of the behavior that the aura is applying to units).
0
@Selfcreation: Go
Any base ability can be made autocast by setting its flag in the ability fields. You will need to create some validators for it, but other than that, you don't need to do anything special (unless you want to get into the realm of having the unit target stuff with the ability in a specific way, in which case you would need to get into target sorts etc. But since your ability is just an autocast on self, you don't need to worry about that).
About your second question, there are multiple ways to have a unit randomly cast one of his abilities, though for the sake of simplicity, I would suggest having just one ability with numerous effects that are randomly fired, i.e. the ability's effect field can be a set with all the effects of all the other abilities the unit would randomly pick from. Set a random number list which will fire one of them only if the random number generator spits out a specific value range.
e.g. 1-25 : Effect of Ability 1 26-50 : Effect of Ability 2 etc...
Naturally, there are other ways to do this, but I'm not sure about how confident you feel with the data editor for me to go into those explanations.
0
Someone needs to make a tutorial on effect-markers and target sorts. As many of you already know, they help when creating autocast single target abilities that will keep casting on a target after it has been 'marked' by right clicking on it.
Many people have asked how to do this but I just don't have the time to go over markers and target sorts and how to use them to get a unit to keep firing on the same target without using buffs and area searches.
So hopefully if someone gets time, they can make a tutorial on effect-markers and target sorts.
0
Not exactly.
Yes.
Yes.
0
Inconsistent model/animation and actors is, from my experience, largely due to incorrect settings in the model actor's BSD animation set and timings (i.e. its Birth Stand Death animations).
Sometimes models don't have a Stand animation or sometimes they don't have a death animation, so what happens is that for the time period where it should be playing its death animation (for example) it sits there waiting for the animation to play but it never does.
This loop holds for a while until it automatically clears, however, if the actor was asked to play again between the time it was stuck and it auto-cleared, the actor won't play any new requested animation (which is probably why it appears to be "randomly" failing).
The way to fix this issue is to manually control the BSD set, either through manually entering lifecycle timings or through other events. Though without having more information, it is hard to tell that you are suffering from this problem and not something totally different.
0
You have to use markers and target sorts. The explanation of what both are and how they can be used is a little involved for me to get into here, perhaps someone can write a tutorial about them since both are very powerful for the purpose you both are describing, i.e. controlling what and how a unit attacks things.
Unfortunately I don't have the time right now to write the tutorial myself. You two should go to the tutorials section and request a tutorial on Markers and Target Sorts.
A quick jist of it is that you can make abilities/effects/buffs etc place "markers" on units, and then control how some other ability/effect/weapon etc pick their targets in relation to the markers set. You can use it for stuff like making sure a particular weapon/effect only fires at a particular target once before moving on to another, or have a particular unit fire an ability at the same target again and again (for things like autocast damage abilities).
0
@crutex: Go Set the actor creation of the rocks actor to the origin point of the effect, not to the source unit.
0
Change the minimum speed of the unit being knocked. This can be done with by applying a behavior to the unit (of type: Buff) upon start and changing the minimum speed field.
You can find this field:
Behavior - Modfication+ field of the behavior
Movement tab
Movement speed minimum field
Increasing the value will increase the speed of the knockback. When the knockback is over (and the behavior fades) the unit will return to its normal minimum speed automatically.
0
@IskatuMesk: Go Theoretically, yes (with a bit of vector math). Though I don't think its necessary, especially since the center attachment point already exists in the WoW models.
The way it is being done now (at least from what I can see from a cursory glance of the source code), is by just mapping specific WoW attachment id's to their respective SC2 names. This really is the best way to do it. It is simple and doesn't require math (making the overall process much faster).
The only thing we are missing is knowing which specific WoW attachment id maps to the SC2 center one, e.g. we know the WoW attachment called "Base" is the SC2 attachment "Ref_Origin". I'm sure that we will eventually find out what the WoW attachment is that maps to "Ref_Center" (my money is on either "Belly" or "Spell Impact", though I would have to investigate it further to be sure).
For now, we can just use a temporary WoW attachment that we know maps to a similar region in the model (middle-ish) and use that as our Center, which is why I proposed we can use the "Front Hit Region", since we don't need 2 Ref_Target attachments in SC2.
What I have started thinking about now is about all those extra "Ref_Hardpoint" attachments that are getting sent through as well. I wonder how much space we can save on filesize if we thin out the ones we don't really need. Does anyone know what kind of % of final filesize the attachment data for a single attachment takes? Who knows, maybe if we thin out the number of attachments the file is trying to store, we might be able to reduce the final filesize of a single m3 export.
Though I guess optimization of the exporter process is still a long way away :)