Want an ugly hack? Create a site operator with an offset of negative X and stick it onto your units, it'll put it off to the right of the unit. Then you could maybe create/remove units at that offset and reference their position for where the move order should be going.
...there has to be a more elegant way to do this but that possibility just popped into my head any ways.
Sounds like a mix up with the targeting of the persistent effect, which btw I have used successfully to build effects that issue orders aimed at points. Oh here we go, remember programmer's data based movement system? It I think does exactly what you're looking to do with a move order through an effect, check it out to confirm your setting things up the same way.
I seem to remember someone mentioning they'd open their map with something like notepad and be able to just copy/paste the entire blob of data editor entries into an empty mod file they'd previously created. You tried searching for this topic yet? I'm pretty sure there are other threads about it with answers.
Not really:) Its been pretty smooth since I realized to just trigger off the weapon attack effects instead of anything else. I can answer any further questions a little later today if you have them, fraid I've got a cisco lab in an hour and gotta get ready for that, oh the hardships of college student life :P
Heya guys yah there is one dummy per unit that needs to have its turret puppet-controlled and what's going on is a few triggers that are watching for situations where the unit tries to attack something other then that dummy and when that happens the trigger orders the unit to attack the dummy again. So yup the dummy is just being bobbed around to where I want the turret facing and the turret is just happily sitting there blasting away.
So you need a method of tying a dummy to a unit (I use two arrays of units and just ensure whenever a puppet-turret unit is born its added to one array and instantly a dummy puppeteer is added to the other in the same value so I can more easily refer them to each other), need another trigger to watch for any puppet units dying so that you can kill off the dummy puppeteer at the same time and then an event trigger watching each instance of those empty weapon's effects straying from the wanted target and correcting them with a order to attack(making the weapons fire only like every two seconds doesn't change the turret's motion and greatly reduces the times this event fires, I recommend doing so). Along with the puppet's weapon being setup to let it continue firing on the dummies ala how diamondbacks fire while moving. I further restricted what the empty weapon's targeting filters will fire at just to reduce the number of things that'll potentially distract them from the dummy we want them aiming at.
Btw once I realized to shift the event trigger to watch each time the weapon fired it pretty much fixed those last instances where the turrets would aim off-course for prolonged periods of time, its now pretty rare and only until the next time the weapon shoots, since then its ordered to go back to attacking the right dummy again immediately.
ED: Oh right better explanation of how the dummies are being put where they need to be: There is a periodic trigger event firing every .5 seconds that orders them to move to 8 in front of the facing of their respective puppt units and they have a much higher movement speed then the puppet turret units. Additionally since my attack methods are all ability based there is another trigger that whenever one of those puppet unit's abilities activates it instantly teleports the appropriate dummy to ground zero of where that attack is headed. (then of course a half second later they start to make their way back to 8 ahead when the next periodic fires)
Int variable called Playercount or whatever, its just a name.
action Set variable Playercount = (number of players in player group(active players))
Math it up from there however you want to adjust your difficulty.
Far as anyone's found yah when you make a turret actor it pretty much owns that bone and won't let anything adjust it, if you don't make a turret actor and try to manipulate that bone it'll work...but it'll disconnect everything from the actor attached to that bone which is equally frustrating since you can't really tie them together again, at least as far as anyone's worked out that is.
Many attacks use independent 'action' actors that create a lot of the visuals and other things involved in them, I noticed this is something *alot* of the terran units use and its unfortunately annoying in that they are rarely found directly in the effects chains or the links fields in the data editor for the rest of the assets involved in a weapon's attack or ability. Look for one that might be associated with the battlecruiser's pod attack and if it exists that's likely the thing that controls more of that particular effect.
Btw turrets and abilities are heinously annoying to try and sync, I'd just as soon recommend you forget that particular aspect for now. I have a system that sorta works to tie them together but it is very hackish and basically involving neutering the unit's real weapon in favour of pretending to be the ability's weapon just so the turret will move as I want. The bone you want to rotate btw would be turretZ but unfortunately the turret actor owns it and the engine won't let you edit that bone's rotation manually without severing the turret from the rest of the unit model, its really a lost cause at this point until blizzard gives us a hand in understanding or exposing more of the turret controlling functions of the engine.
Hrm, I know there are a few effects that just flat out remove units from the game so likely you want one of them that missile2 calls and aims at its caster (which would be missile1), or if that doesn't work the ugly method of just having missile2 inflict a whack of damage on missile1. Missiles are after all units and obey all the laws of having health and what happens when they take damage is the same as any other unit.
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Thirded, portraits integrated into dialogs would be a really sweet thing to be able to do.
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Want an ugly hack? Create a site operator with an offset of negative X and stick it onto your units, it'll put it off to the right of the unit. Then you could maybe create/remove units at that offset and reference their position for where the move order should be going.
...there has to be a more elegant way to do this but that possibility just popped into my head any ways.
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@RileyStarcraft: Go
heh reminds me of the Black & White 2 loading screen where you could screw with the logo while it was loading the game :P
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@WildPickles: Go
+1, this is how you'd do it for sure.
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Sounds like a mix up with the targeting of the persistent effect, which btw I have used successfully to build effects that issue orders aimed at points. Oh here we go, remember programmer's data based movement system? It I think does exactly what you're looking to do with a move order through an effect, check it out to confirm your setting things up the same way.
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I seem to remember someone mentioning they'd open their map with something like notepad and be able to just copy/paste the entire blob of data editor entries into an empty mod file they'd previously created. You tried searching for this topic yet? I'm pretty sure there are other threads about it with answers.
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@SouLCarveRR: Go
Agreed, actual written ones are so much easier to follow and be able to multi-task with.
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@tigerija: Go
Not really:) Its been pretty smooth since I realized to just trigger off the weapon attack effects instead of anything else. I can answer any further questions a little later today if you have them, fraid I've got a cisco lab in an hour and gotta get ready for that, oh the hardships of college student life :P
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Heya guys yah there is one dummy per unit that needs to have its turret puppet-controlled and what's going on is a few triggers that are watching for situations where the unit tries to attack something other then that dummy and when that happens the trigger orders the unit to attack the dummy again. So yup the dummy is just being bobbed around to where I want the turret facing and the turret is just happily sitting there blasting away.
So you need a method of tying a dummy to a unit (I use two arrays of units and just ensure whenever a puppet-turret unit is born its added to one array and instantly a dummy puppeteer is added to the other in the same value so I can more easily refer them to each other), need another trigger to watch for any puppet units dying so that you can kill off the dummy puppeteer at the same time and then an event trigger watching each instance of those empty weapon's effects straying from the wanted target and correcting them with a order to attack(making the weapons fire only like every two seconds doesn't change the turret's motion and greatly reduces the times this event fires, I recommend doing so). Along with the puppet's weapon being setup to let it continue firing on the dummies ala how diamondbacks fire while moving. I further restricted what the empty weapon's targeting filters will fire at just to reduce the number of things that'll potentially distract them from the dummy we want them aiming at.
Btw once I realized to shift the event trigger to watch each time the weapon fired it pretty much fixed those last instances where the turrets would aim off-course for prolonged periods of time, its now pretty rare and only until the next time the weapon shoots, since then its ordered to go back to attacking the right dummy again immediately.
ED: Oh right better explanation of how the dummies are being put where they need to be: There is a periodic trigger event firing every .5 seconds that orders them to move to 8 in front of the facing of their respective puppt units and they have a much higher movement speed then the puppet turret units. Additionally since my attack methods are all ability based there is another trigger that whenever one of those puppet unit's abilities activates it instantly teleports the appropriate dummy to ground zero of where that attack is headed. (then of course a half second later they start to make their way back to 8 ahead when the next periodic fires)
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This sure beats digging around photoshop wikis and the like trying to figure out what all these terms actually mean, good stuff, great demonstration.
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@noodleheadstudios: Go
Int variable called Playercount or whatever, its just a name.
action Set variable Playercount = (number of players in player group(active players))
Math it up from there however you want to adjust your difficulty.
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@Molsterr: Go
True enough, always a tough call on how to build an interface to appeal to a newcomer's first instincts for sure.
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@DivinoZarathos: Go
Far as anyone's found yah when you make a turret actor it pretty much owns that bone and won't let anything adjust it, if you don't make a turret actor and try to manipulate that bone it'll work...but it'll disconnect everything from the actor attached to that bone which is equally frustrating since you can't really tie them together again, at least as far as anyone's worked out that is.
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Many attacks use independent 'action' actors that create a lot of the visuals and other things involved in them, I noticed this is something *alot* of the terran units use and its unfortunately annoying in that they are rarely found directly in the effects chains or the links fields in the data editor for the rest of the assets involved in a weapon's attack or ability. Look for one that might be associated with the battlecruiser's pod attack and if it exists that's likely the thing that controls more of that particular effect.
Btw turrets and abilities are heinously annoying to try and sync, I'd just as soon recommend you forget that particular aspect for now. I have a system that sorta works to tie them together but it is very hackish and basically involving neutering the unit's real weapon in favour of pretending to be the ability's weapon just so the turret will move as I want. The bone you want to rotate btw would be turretZ but unfortunately the turret actor owns it and the engine won't let you edit that bone's rotation manually without severing the turret from the rest of the unit model, its really a lost cause at this point until blizzard gives us a hand in understanding or exposing more of the turret controlling functions of the engine.
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@Bauf: Go
Hrm, I know there are a few effects that just flat out remove units from the game so likely you want one of them that missile2 calls and aims at its caster (which would be missile1), or if that doesn't work the ugly method of just having missile2 inflict a whack of damage on missile1. Missiles are after all units and obey all the laws of having health and what happens when they take damage is the same as any other unit.