Set up an Actor message on the unit you want upgraded with Event - Unit Birth / Behavior / Effect (whichever applies best to your case) and message Model Swap to the desired upgrade model. Use a TermValidateUnit (or whichever is most appropriate) to specify when the model swap should occur, if you have validators set up for the upgrade.
Yes, and after more investigating I found out that even the Ravens on my map were getting jittery placement models, so it couldn't be the actors.
Turns out my map's camera settings were also set up via Terrain, so resetting those properties didn't do anything when I tried the first time. After closer inspection it turns out my first guess was correct - my Camera settings were screwing things up, and the culprit: Near Clip was set too low. My map's parameters set the near clip to 0.01, and after increasing it to 0.25, the placement models are as smooth as ever.
I have an ability similar to that of the PDD - it creates a unit at a point around the caster. The ability itself works just fine - however, the placement model for the unit (when selecting the ability but not having chosen a target point yet) jitters like crazy if the casting unit is moving.
Now, I could have sworn that the original PDD ability did not do this, so I opened up a brand new map with nothing on it to test and sure enough, the Raven's PDD doesn't jitter around when you're placing it, even if it's moving. So I'm left to conclude that I screwed something up on my map.
At first I thought that it might have something to do with my Camera Settings (there are some settings that I played around with for Follow Leash, etc), so I reset that. No results. I told myself maybe the Gameplay/UI settings I played around with may have screwed up something, so I reset those. No results. I then looked around at the PDD ability to see if there was anything in Actors that may have been different - sure enough, there are "Placement Models" and Placement Actors on the PDD that I hadn't set up, so I just copied over everything from the PDD to my new ability in hopes that it would fix the issue. The result? Nothing.
I'm out of ideas. This seems like a really simple issue to resolve, but I can't put my finger around it. Does anyone have a clue what could be wrong?
Working with weapons and targeted abilities for sure. I had the same thought cross my mind, I have a feeling this setup may not work for self-cast AoE abilities, but I'll find out when the time comes. For now it works flawlessly.
Holy mother of christ I figured it out after a day of trial and error!
Turns out your idea was pretty close, but I had to literally try out every single freaking system reference that existed to find one that would give me the result I wanted, and it turned out that configuring my Vector Forward SOp with a System reference of "Last Target Unit" did the trick!
This opens up a floodgate of possibilities for custom shields on my map without the need to actually give units shield stats, which is pretty freaking awesome.
Ok, so I tried your idea but just as a proof-of-concept. Below is how I configured it. It produced no visually discernible effect.
The Forward Vector SOp
Reference Set is based of an actor that is already in the game (for testing purposes, if it had worked I would'v done gone further with the intermediary route)
The shield impact ModelAddition (configured by Host SOp, for testing purposes)
You will need to orientate it to target the damage source. This will probably be another actor event which sets facing towards the damage source.
Could you give me an example of this? I've been setting up Set Rotation From messages but they're not working correctly. Host SOps don't seem to change anything either (at least not dynamically).
As you are using a damage response I would host an invisible model onto the attacking unit and use a reference set action to change the target of a SOp(Forward Vector) SOp to the created model. Or something similar.
I'm not familiar with the Reference Set messages, so I'd need an example there. Also, if I understand correctly, wouldn't I accomplish the same thing by simply giving the shield impact model's Host Site Ops a Forward Vector SOp with a Host Forward referencing the damage source (not sure if there's a system reference I could use for that, though I could probaby use an alias). If that's the case, I've already tried this with various potential hosts and none have made a difference.
Then why not have it such that the units health is all the shield and like no life stuff n then alter shield regen stat
Thematics + Visual Appeal.
My map will feature all three races, having Terran ships (the ships I'm trying to modify) with a crapton of Shields just doesn't fit the Starcraft Theme at all. Additionally, Units in the Editor must have at least 1 HP, so having a 1 HP + 10000 Shield unit on the UI just looks really really awkward.
Have you tried attaching an invisible dummy model with shield attachments actors to the dynamically shielded target actor? I recall attaching actors to a unit actor gives them more damage points so I would imagine the same would happen with shield attachment points.
Interesting idea, but after trying it out (attaching both a Model and an Actor with shield Attachment Properties) it just leads to the exact same problem I had before - models and actors don't have Shield stats, so attaching a random model or actor with shield attachment points will not make the impact actors show up (nor do they even appear to have a shield radius).
Ok, so maybe, just maybe, this is impossible to do with Shield and Shield Impact Actors. Can I at least have a way to orient my ModelAddition Actor so that it faces towards the impact point of a weapon/ability directed at it?
In the video below, I set up a ModelAddition Actor to respond to Behaviour - "Damage Handled" Events so everytime my behaviour (a shield with a Damage Response amount) absorbs damage it creates itself. However, as you can see below, the actor always faces the same direction (looks like the Forward vector of my Battlecruiser), rather than in the direction of where the damage came from.
How would I set up my actors so this Model orients itself in such a way as to appear in the direction of where the damage is coming from?
I've tried this already, and it had no effect. I also tried editing the original actor by removing the ValidateUnit Term, but even that changed nothing. It seems like a unit must have shield stats in order for visuals to appear. If I could get a proof-of-concept showing otherwise, that would be the direction I'd like to head towards.
As I said in my original post, that only works for units that already have or are given shield stats. Otherwise modifying these fields has no impact on the model whatsoever. Attached screenshot for proof:
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "a copy of the shield". The units in question are already set up to have 0 shields in all respects. I just want the visual impact effects to show up at will. If you mean setting up a behaviour that gives 0 shields, that doesn't do anything, unless there's a specific flag that enables shield impacts in there somewhere that I'm not aware of.
Is it possible to create shield impact splats (like protoss units) on units that do not have shields?
I am aware that I could just give said units shields and modify their model attachment properties to give them shield splats, but the point of this question is to give the visual shield impact without actually giving units any Shield Stats (for example, in the case of a Behaviour with a Modify Damage Response).
I have tried playing around with the Shield and Shield Impact Actor Events in hopes of creating shield impacts on units that are not Shield Capable, to no avail.
I am also aware that I can (and have) just create a Model Actor with a shield impact effect model and have it respond to Damage Taken or Damage Response Messages. While it is an acceptable substitute, I would really like to have non-shield units get the same dynamic shield impacts as Protoss units (especially the directional impacts) in an easy-to-implement way. Is this possible?
Nevermind, I just set my Kill Resource to either Terrazine or Custom since those don't generate any floating text, and set the Show/Hide Resource to the appropriate resource.
(not sure if there's something in Actors that makes the text show up for minerals and vespene though, couldn't see anything there that made a difference)
Pretty simple question - hopefully with a simple answer: How do I hide the popups that are displayed on units that are killed when you give them a Kill Resource value under the Units tab? I tried playing around with various unit flags but it doesn't seem like any of them hide these displays.
If it's not possible, is there at least a way to move where they appear relative to their respective units? Right now they appear at the very bottom of my map (ground level, or height = 0), which means units that have higher Height values don't get their counters to show up on them, but way under them.
Alright well I came up with the most reasonable compromise I could given the circumstances. I went with the behaviour stack/Target Sort route for maximum efficiency (TSRandom was hitting too few targets too many times), and if I need more targeting capabilities I'll just substitute the [Retarget fields that I was trying to to get to work in the Launch Missile] Effect with periodic [Search Areas that use Redirect Missile] instead. Speaking of which, I found out that the cause of my missiles disappearing when a target died was (ironically) because the Retarget fields were interfering with the missiles. I reset the fields and now the missiles complete their trajectory to their final destination (dead or not), which is acceptable.
For future reference, judging by all the research I've done, I don't think it's possible for abilities (Effect - Target, Effect - Instant, and Augment are the ones I tried) to utilize the Retarget Fields. It is a feature that appears to be reserved for weapons only.
0
Set up an Actor message on the unit you want upgraded with Event - Unit Birth / Behavior / Effect (whichever applies best to your case) and message Model Swap to the desired upgrade model. Use a Term ValidateUnit (or whichever is most appropriate) to specify when the model swap should occur, if you have validators set up for the upgrade.
0
Yes, and after more investigating I found out that even the Ravens on my map were getting jittery placement models, so it couldn't be the actors.
Turns out my map's camera settings were also set up via Terrain, so resetting those properties didn't do anything when I tried the first time. After closer inspection it turns out my first guess was correct - my Camera settings were screwing things up, and the culprit: Near Clip was set too low. My map's parameters set the near clip to 0.01, and after increasing it to 0.25, the placement models are as smooth as ever.
Case closed.
0
I have an ability similar to that of the PDD - it creates a unit at a point around the caster. The ability itself works just fine - however, the placement model for the unit (when selecting the ability but not having chosen a target point yet) jitters like crazy if the casting unit is moving.
Now, I could have sworn that the original PDD ability did not do this, so I opened up a brand new map with nothing on it to test and sure enough, the Raven's PDD doesn't jitter around when you're placing it, even if it's moving. So I'm left to conclude that I screwed something up on my map.
At first I thought that it might have something to do with my Camera Settings (there are some settings that I played around with for Follow Leash, etc), so I reset that. No results. I told myself maybe the Gameplay/UI settings I played around with may have screwed up something, so I reset those. No results. I then looked around at the PDD ability to see if there was anything in Actors that may have been different - sure enough, there are "Placement Models" and Placement Actors on the PDD that I hadn't set up, so I just copied over everything from the PDD to my new ability in hopes that it would fix the issue. The result? Nothing.
I'm out of ideas. This seems like a really simple issue to resolve, but I can't put my finger around it. Does anyone have a clue what could be wrong?
0
Working with weapons and targeted abilities for sure. I had the same thought cross my mind, I have a feeling this setup may not work for self-cast AoE abilities, but I'll find out when the time comes. For now it works flawlessly.
0
Holy mother of christ I figured it out after a day of trial and error!
Turns out your idea was pretty close, but I had to literally try out every single freaking system reference that existed to find one that would give me the result I wanted, and it turned out that configuring my Vector Forward SOp with a System reference of "Last Target Unit" did the trick!
This opens up a floodgate of possibilities for custom shields on my map without the need to actually give units shield stats, which is pretty freaking awesome.
Case closed!
0
Ok, so I tried your idea but just as a proof-of-concept. Below is how I configured it. It produced no visually discernible effect.
The Forward Vector SOp
Reference Set is based of an actor that is already in the game (for testing purposes, if it had worked I would'v done gone further with the intermediary route)
The shield impact ModelAddition (configured by Host SOp, for testing purposes)
Recommendations?
0
I'm not familiar with the Reference Set messages, so I'd need an example there. Also, if I understand correctly, wouldn't I accomplish the same thing by simply giving the shield impact model's Host Site Ops a Forward Vector SOp with a Host Forward referencing the damage source (not sure if there's a system reference I could use for that, though I could probaby use an alias). If that's the case, I've already tried this with various potential hosts and none have made a difference.
0
Interesting idea, but after trying it out (attaching both a Model and an Actor with shield Attachment Properties) it just leads to the exact same problem I had before - models and actors don't have Shield stats, so attaching a random model or actor with shield attachment points will not make the impact actors show up (nor do they even appear to have a shield radius).
Ok, so maybe, just maybe, this is impossible to do with Shield and Shield Impact Actors. Can I at least have a way to orient my ModelAddition Actor so that it faces towards the impact point of a weapon/ability directed at it?
In the video below, I set up a ModelAddition Actor to respond to Behaviour - "Damage Handled" Events so everytime my behaviour (a shield with a Damage Response amount) absorbs damage it creates itself. However, as you can see below, the actor always faces the same direction (looks like the Forward vector of my Battlecruiser), rather than in the direction of where the damage came from.
How would I set up my actors so this Model orients itself in such a way as to appear in the direction of where the damage is coming from?
0
I've tried this already, and it had no effect. I also tried editing the original actor by removing the ValidateUnit Term, but even that changed nothing. It seems like a unit must have shield stats in order for visuals to appear. If I could get a proof-of-concept showing otherwise, that would be the direction I'd like to head towards.
0
As I said in my original post, that only works for units that already have or are given shield stats. Otherwise modifying these fields has no impact on the model whatsoever. Attached screenshot for proof:
0
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "a copy of the shield". The units in question are already set up to have 0 shields in all respects. I just want the visual impact effects to show up at will. If you mean setting up a behaviour that gives 0 shields, that doesn't do anything, unless there's a specific flag that enables shield impacts in there somewhere that I'm not aware of.
0
Is it possible to create shield impact splats (like protoss units) on units that do not have shields?
I am aware that I could just give said units shields and modify their model attachment properties to give them shield splats, but the point of this question is to give the visual shield impact without actually giving units any Shield Stats (for example, in the case of a Behaviour with a Modify Damage Response).
I have tried playing around with the Shield and Shield Impact Actor Events in hopes of creating shield impacts on units that are not Shield Capable, to no avail.
I am also aware that I can (and have) just create a Model Actor with a shield impact effect model and have it respond to Damage Taken or Damage Response Messages. While it is an acceptable substitute, I would really like to have non-shield units get the same dynamic shield impacts as Protoss units (especially the directional impacts) in an easy-to-implement way. Is this possible?
0
Nevermind, I just set my Kill Resource to either Terrazine or Custom since those don't generate any floating text, and set the Show/Hide Resource to the appropriate resource.
(not sure if there's something in Actors that makes the text show up for minerals and vespene though, couldn't see anything there that made a difference)
0
Pretty simple question - hopefully with a simple answer: How do I hide the popups that are displayed on units that are killed when you give them a Kill Resource value under the Units tab? I tried playing around with various unit flags but it doesn't seem like any of them hide these displays.
If it's not possible, is there at least a way to move where they appear relative to their respective units? Right now they appear at the very bottom of my map (ground level, or height = 0), which means units that have higher Height values don't get their counters to show up on them, but way under them.
0
Alright well I came up with the most reasonable compromise I could given the circumstances. I went with the behaviour stack/Target Sort route for maximum efficiency (TSRandom was hitting too few targets too many times), and if I need more targeting capabilities I'll just substitute the [Retarget fields that I was trying to to get to work in the Launch Missile] Effect with periodic [Search Areas that use Redirect Missile] instead. Speaking of which, I found out that the cause of my missiles disappearing when a target died was (ironically) because the Retarget fields were interfering with the missiles. I reset the fields and now the missiles complete their trajectory to their final destination (dead or not), which is acceptable.
For future reference, judging by all the research I've done, I don't think it's possible for abilities (Effect - Target, Effect - Instant, and Augment are the ones I tried) to utilize the Retarget Fields. It is a feature that appears to be reserved for weapons only.
I will call this case closed.