SC2Mapster

Added Barracks and Terran Drop Pod images to the album, nothing too exiting. I'm going to experiment with making ghost Protoss now (they will probably be red). Any advice on making Protoss units seem 'ghostly' ? UPDATE: I played around with Protoss 'Ghosts' and got quite far using tint and opacity actor events. Along with slightly altered textures. I decreased the contrast on the diffuse texture and used the 'dodge' tool on the shadow areas. I then blurred the whole image slightly and added a light pinky-red colour overlay. I'm not happy with the results to be honest. They are permanently cloaked units and the blue cloak texture is making the unit lighter and far less opaque. Consequently I can't balance the HDR multiplier and the opacity to get a nice, shiny but see-through look. Anybody know if I can apply permanent cloak to a unit without the blue cloak texture? (like low graphics in-game) the same diffuse texture, just made opaque. I'll look into it tomowwow http://imgur.com/a/t7lxg

@DrSuperEvil: [SOLVED] Se the real issue here was increasing the charge count after the unit has finished training. The key is the 'Specialize' ability type, this is what the Vulture uses. It basically enables you to que an effect. I made a new Ability of type Specialize and input all the cost and timing info of the Marine with the 'charge increase' effect in the effect field. I then made a dummy train ability that was modified by the specialize ability and also linked to my Calldown ability on the seperate unit. Thank's for your help mister SuperEvil sir.

And I thought no-one cared about my humble texture mods, thanks for showing me love. I updated the post because most of it was to do with a data editor issue when duplicating units with reversible morph abilities. I made something resembling a tutorial for this particular method. Maybe I'll make a decent tutorial once I've explored custom textures a bit more. I like the idea of applying custom textures to a melee map, that would be fun. Unfortunately I spend all my time shouting at the Data Editor and crying at the moment. I'm only making custom textures as a break from it's icy, unforgiving grasp. I'll keep updating the gallery and the thread as new textures are made.

@DrSuperEvil: While I am making an effort to explore the data editor and reference SC2Mapster, I am still somewhat of a noob. I enter the 'add charge' effect into the 'info effect' field below the 'info unit' field in the 'Train marine' ability command of the Barracks - Train ability. The effect is type - Modify Unit with the 'calldown marine' ability selected, a usage charge count of -1 and player value - 'player origin' With the ability command, I have tried locations Global and Player with no success. Are you quite sure that making a train ability add charges to an effect target ability on a seperate unit is that easy? The vulture replenishes its own , not those of another unit. I referenced that ability when making the add charge ability for the Calldown Tower.

Quote from DrSuperEvil: just make the charges be shared globally by a player and have your ability use a Modify Unit effect like the vulture spidermine replenish.

Fankly this seemed a little cryptic, verging on terse. I've attached a mod file with the Calldown Tower and relevant units. Type 'MTU' in the terrain editor units tab to find the custom units. The Calldown Tower is named 'Requisition tower'. This mod may not have the settings stated above but it has all necessary parts. The increase charge effects are called ''add 1...'' If you can make the charges on that Requisition tower increase every time a unit is trained from any Barracks of the same player then I'll buy you an ice cream :) If not then you sir shall have to eat your hat.

So I can't see any way that this is possible but I'm sure it must be. I have 1 unit (Barracks). I have another unit (Calldown Tower) with an effect-target call-down ability (just like the mule) that calls down a Marine. I have set the barracks to create the Drop Pod Rising model and no unit when Marine training is complete. This works fine. Instead of the Marine spawning when training completes, I would like to modify the ability charge on the Calldown Tower (+1). So effectively, the Marines are trained from the Barracks and instantly 'launched off the map'. They can then be dropped at any location via the Calldown Tower. The Calldown Tower has an ability with a Modify Unit Effect to increase the Marine Call-Down charges simply by setting the 'Charges Use' to -1, effectively adding a charge. So one ability charges up another. This works fine when both abilities are used by the Calldown Tower. Upgrades can be used to modify charges but only 'max', 'start' and 'use'. I want to add a charge to the current available charges. This is what I've been looking into. - A way of adding charges automatically (upon completion of a particular training ability command) but adding the charge to the Calldown Tower, not the Barracks. I don't think this is possible. I think that a better option would be to issue an order to the Calldown Tower to use an ability with an Effect - Modify Unit and increase the charge. I know this ability works. It's getting it to auto-cast upon completion of a training ability by a separate unit that has totally stumped me. EDIT: Perhaps auto-cast options on the Calldown Tower's increase charge ability? Summary: I want to add a charge to one an ability, upon completion of a training ability by a separate unit. Or issue an ability command order to a unit, upon completion of a training ability by a separate unit.

@Hobrow: This is the full story, still mostly gibberish to me. WARNING: [ 61 1] CActorModel[CommandCenterReactor] Trying to decrement Status[Queuing], which does not exist. This ability has a linked behaviour that doubles the active queue slots (nuclear reactor queue buff) same as with all reactor buildings. Probably no connection with the ''[Queuing]'' though. DrSuperEvil, I'll check that out, sounds reassuringly plausable. it's 2am, tomorrow's another day.

For those of you who haven't seen it, there's data for a Command Center Reactor. Everything is there and I've applied it to the Command Center. It works perfectly if I apply the upgrade in map initialisation. But when research it from the CC, in-game I get this error message. The message comes at the point when the research finishes and the Reactor actor is created. http://imgur.com/MPkBE The strange thing is that everything seems to work fine, yet still the damn message. Could this be something to do with the ability being from the campaign story tech? Perhaps it's not set up to be added in-game and instead is meant to appear with the birth of the CC. In the Command Center actor events, the event is: EVENT - upgrade.commandcenterreactor.add ACTION - create: commandcenterreactor(actor)

@Ranakastrasz: SOLVED: Add a new Validator of type - 'Player food available' Then adjust the operator and value to whatever you wish. I am using this for an ability affect target to train units via drops.

@rtschutter: I am trying to do exactly the same thing and I have the same problem. I am unable to find or create a validator that queries supplies used/supplies made. How do I stop an effect firing/ability being used using validators?

I've been modding the Terran textures and my next job is the medic. The most important textures I need (medic_diffuse/emissive) are nowhere to be seen in my MPQ extractor. Although I did a text search and five files came up. Three were just .m3 and two were database files that I can't do anything with. My texture mod thread is linked below. I am using Ladiks MPQ Editor to view Liberty Base Assets. http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/development/artist-tavern/28533-saltys-terran-texture-mods/#p1

I've been working on some Terran texture mods for a project.

Modding the Terran texture is fairly easy: there are lots of straight lines and textures are made up mostly of metal plates so simple modifications aren't difficult.

You can find a great tutorial on applying custom textures to units using the data editor here: http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/resources/tutorials/20772-data-actor-events-message-texture-select-by-id/#posts

Here are my textures so far (I am mostly concentrating on the Data work at the moment so only a few units are done.

http://imgur.com/a/qP9jI

For those of you not familiar with Photoshop, the graphics work is simple:

• Open up the Previewer window in the editor and have it floating above your 2D Diffuse texture in Photoshop. Looking at the 3D image preview, select which parts of the model you want to recolour and find them on the texture image.

• As you work out which part of texture is applied to the parts you want to alter, scribble with a paintbrush on a new layer in the texture image to remind you which areas you are editing. With my textures I used a bright blue brush for parts I wanted to make blue, and red for parts I wanted to exclude from my overall black mask. This is purely for reference.

• I applied three different techniques to actually re-colour my textures. This is a somewhat slap-dash, but fast and effective method.

1. For parts that were just plain metal and I wanted to colour: (one layer for all)

- Make a new layer.

- Select the area(s) in question (polygonal lasso FTW) and fill with the colour of your choice.

- In the layers window, change the blend mode from Normal to Overlay, this will make your ugly blocks of colour take on the shading below them, colouring your metal.

2. For Parts that were already coloured but I wanted a different colour. (e.g. yellow paint on Terran buildings, Marine visor)

- Go to the background layer (our texture image) and select whichever areas you wish to alter the colour of, copy and paste all of them as you go.

- You should end up with all of your areas as separate layers. Merge the layers that have the same original colours (this will probably be all of them).

- At the top of the screen select Image - Adjustments - Hue/saturation. We want to alter the Hue. Keeping your eye on the live preview of your image, adjust your chosen colour.

((this part can also be done with overlays but I think this technique is better))

Note: Editing emissive textures can also be done very easily with technique 2. Just alter the hue/saturation of the emissive.dds background image or a selected part of it. Making all of the Command Center's lights blue took all of 25 seconds.

3. The black mask.

- Make a new layer, select the whole image and fill with black, giving you a big black square.

- Adjust the opacity in the Layers window to reveal the image below (I recommend 60%). Everything will look a bit too dark bit I'm not finished yet.

- Select the layer used in part 1, the colour overlay. There is a tiny preview image on the left and the Layer name on the right. Right-click on the preview image and select 'Select Pixels'. Now you have a selection of all the bits you coloured with the overlay.

- Keeping you selection open, click on your black mask layer and press delete. Now you will see your coloured areas shine through the black mask.

- Repeat the last two steps with your Layer from part 1, releasing it from the black mask as well.

- You can select other areas that you think shouldn't be masked as well (i.e. the SCV's drill, the Reapers face mask and tubes) and delete them on your black mask layer.

- Don't worry if things look too dark and you can't make out details properly, the Normal and Specular maps will add definition to the texture in-game. Although if you really don't want that matt look, try a black overlay mask with adjusted opacity.

Finally success. Since changing the texture file, I had not changed the texture object name to ad the _blood. After doing that I got this.

Finished article

• goes for a high five*
• nobody in this forum to return high five*

I modified the diffuse texture for the Marine model.

I used this tutorial to apply the texture. I followed it obediently apart from the fact that I was just adding one diffuse texture and it sort of worked: The texture is applied to the Marine but some areas are not aligned properly

I have since re-extracted the file from the MPQ just to check that the art hasn't been updated and my picture is identical (apart from the colouring) to the current Marine texture.

In this picture there are normal Marines and ones textured with my custom texture. The normal ones have grey rifles. Picture of textured marines

I have tried the head, body and main slots and they all look the same. I get no error messages from the unit in the editor or the game. If anyone could help me I'd be very grateful, I'm planning on making new skins for most Terran units but I need to get one right first.

Here's the link to my OP in the artists Tavern

UPDATE: After much toiling, I've realised that the marine_diffuse is not displayed under the marine model in the previewer. It is marine_diffuse_blood - the same texture but half the size and with the shield and some bloody marine parts added on to the right. So I've applied my adaptation to marine_blood_diffuse. I've tried playing with the prefix/suffix and all I get is this. Texture fail It seems the marines have just been textured with their player color, so the texturing has failed. >:/

Also, is this thread dead? Because I really would like to solve this problem and crack on with makine aWesomE new textures for all the Terran units.

Images I am posting aren't showing in my preview so I linked them as well

Thanks for the tip SnyderGuy, I'm used to the print screen button saving to clipboard, with SC2 this just gives you a black screen to paste. The print screen button also saves to the screenshot folder (derp).

SoulFilcher - From what you're saying, MIP maps are the progressively lower resolution copies of the image that lie to the right. From now on I will let Photoshop generate them. As you can see in the DDS saving options image I have plenty of different options tagged 4:4:4:4 but no 8:8:8:8. I will look into what .dds files are all about, but what I really need are all the dos and don'ts relating to SC2 diffuse textures.

.DDS saving options NVIDIA

Below you see both normal Marines and ones textured with my modified image. You can tell the normal Marines apart easily because their rifles are grey. Since looking at this screenshot I have also noticed a descrepency in the player colouring on the shoulder pads of the Marine; There is a small black ellipse on each one.

Textured model

I also extracted the original marine_diffuse texture from the MPQ and replaced my custom texture with it in my MOD data. Effectively texturing the Marine as I did before (using actor create - select tex. by ID) but using the original diffuse as opposed to an edited one. Exactly the same issues apply, as I expected.

Textured with original diffuse

I modified the diffuse texture for the Marine model.

I applied that model successfully to the unit. Most of the model looks fine apart from the Marines rifle, hand and possibly arm which all have the wrong part of the texture applied to them. See post below for a screenshot of the textured Marines.

I used this tutorial Modding the Prisoner Zealot to apply the texture. I followed it obediently apart from the fact that I was just adding one diffuse texture and, like I say, it worked. I just have this annoying problem of the weapon being textured wrongly.

I have since re-extracted the file from the MPQ just to check that the art hasn't been updated and my picture is identical (apart from the colouring) to the current Marine texture.

Perhaps someone knows a guide for saving .dds files in Photoshop. I use the 'NVIDIA DDS Format v3.02' to enable Photoshop to do so. I also made sure the 'use existing MIP maps' option was checked but I don't know anything about any of the fields (including what an MIP map is). I am, however, a dab-hand with the Photoshop Polygonal Lasso ;) and I'm intending on modifying most of the Terran unit textures with a better theme (if I can solve this problem). So if anyone is willing to help me out, I'd be happy to share my data assets.

Help me SC2Mapster community, you're my only hope.