SC2 BETA Editor findings

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Xenon
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Re: SC2 Editor findings

Post by Xenon »

Ugh, setting the maximum count to 1 can make some of the rockets fail to explode. :P

Anything in particular you'd like me to elaborate on?
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Re: SC2 Editor findings

Post by IskatuMesk »

Well for starters I have absolutely no idea how movers work at all.
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Re: SC2 Editor findings

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

IskatuMesk wrote: Well for starters I have absolutely no idea how movers work at all.
From my limited experience, it seems to be more or less the "pathfinding" on top of considering which kind of terrain they can move on. Although it's more than that but ill let Q do any precisions about it.

For example, if you change a unit's mover from "Ground" to "Colossus", it will ignore mountains and such. It can be funny to see a 45 degrees diagonal while "climbing" until it becomes on the top of the mountain.
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Re: SC2 Editor findings

Post by Xenon »

That's for unit movers, I think projectile movers are the issue here.

The important part of projectile movers are the movement phases. The mover can have several phases, switching between them based on the "outro" values. Movement phases have several drivers. "Guided" is the most common.

Others include "Throw" (gives the projectile a velocity in a specified direction, most often used just after a projectile is fired to make it come off the unit a certain way, then followed by a Guided phase), "Ballistic" (I used this for the artillery) "Parabola" (Infested Terran eggs, reaper jump etc) and probably a few others.

Most of the most important values such as speed, acceleration, max/min speed etc are self-explanatory. "orientation" values are how fast it can turn.

Others are hard to understand. What the heck is the power slide angle?

There's a bug in the "throw band" values that prevents you from setting some of them back to 0. Throw band values seem to determine a range of angles the projectile can be launched at using the throw driver, but I can't tell exactly how the values work.

You can also add motion overlays such as wave (like Mustache Lord shots). The overlays will only show up if the overlay scale is set to something other than 0.
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Re: SC2 Editor findings

Post by Xenon »

Made the cluster ata missiles. They all hit the target, not a random area, but they at least look like they hit all sides. I tried using the "offset by unit radius" flag on the damage effect, but the splash all seems to center on the unit center anyway. Oh well.

Edit: Improved the spead pattern of the artillery weapon shots. The 3rd stage uses a double offset from the 1st stage target (since offsetting the 2nd stage didn't work properly). The missiles cross paths more than they should, but it still looks better than the first version.
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Last edited by Xenon on Sun Jul 04, 2010 10:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: SC2 Editor findings

Post by IskatuMesk »

Excellent, excellent! Soulsplitter and such are totally doable, then. This already looks like it's a step ahead of Supcom (who has HORRIBLE physics performance on projectiles, one of the major performance killers in the game). Just need to do a massive scale test...

Hmm, noticeable dip on around 28 of them firing at once. Not so good. Was hoping for the engine to be a bit faster than that. 4 Gahennas BC's would kill it. Although they fire in volleys and not all at once so maybe it wouldn't be so bad. That and their missiles travel slower. I am still not sure if sc2 is using Havok for projectile movement or not. It would explain why they have poor performance if it was (Havok hates doing a lot of stuff at once).

Is it possible to make the ATA missiles attack random targets when they split?
Last edited by IskatuMesk on Sun Jul 04, 2010 4:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: SC2 Editor findings

Post by Xenon »

Well, I'd hope that the missile movement wouldn't take so much processing power since the hit is predetermined. Trying to make projectiles able to collide with anything will again require an extensive trigger setup.
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Re: SC2 Editor findings

Post by Mr. »

Thank you Mesk, for asking about projectiles and movers right now, because it is precisely what I want to work on right now, and it's nice that Q already explained everything :P

But even with an explanation, it is still confusing as hell.  I'm trying to make a weapon that will launch a series of missiles at a target, which I have been able to make, from scratch.  But now I'm looking at the movers, because I want the missiles to... well... move a particular way. 

I want them to launch out from the sides of the unit, go sideways, and arc toward the target.  I copied the Phoenix's movers, so I've got a pretty good start for that, but what I have no idea about right now is how to randomize the launch direction.  I want some to launch higher, some to launch lower.  Is that what the "Throw Band" values determine?

Before I read your post, I was thinking that I might have to make several different copies of movers, with preset vectors, and create corresponding missile launch effects, but put them all into a "Set" effect, and randomize them.  I'll have to play around with Throw Band and see what happens, though.

EDIT:  Yes, that is EXACTLY what band does.  Perfect.
Last edited by Mr. on Sun Jul 04, 2010 4:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: SC2 Editor findings

Post by IskatuMesk »

There are a billion and one questions I have about projectiles. Basically, recreating AO's stuff and seeing if it's doable. Stuff like meteor/comet shower, Bill's thing is similar to the Oblivion that I wanted to see, trying special effects to attacks, adding physics effects (the Uberlisk's death launch) to on-hit proc chances, random shit in general like critical strikes/overwhelming strikes/ect.
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Re: SC2 Editor findings

Post by Mr. »

I was actually looking at it for a few minutes with Tipereth last night, and I found a way to randomize effects, but I couldn't find a way to set percentages.  I think if you have two effects, it just has a 50/50 shot.  So maybe if you want a 1% chance of an effect firing, you would have to add 99 copies of the other effect.  Orrrrrrr I just haven't found the probability part yet.

Anyway, if you're curious, go to the data editor, and "effects" tab.  Create a new effect or modify an existing one, of the "Set" type.  Add the effects you want, in the "Effects" field, then go down to "Randomize" and set it to enabled.  THEN you need to set "Minimum Count" and "Maximum Count" to 1.  If they're still at 0, then all of the effects will fire, even if you have randomize, I believe.  I only tested this with two effects, though.
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Re: SC2 Editor findings

Post by Xenon »

IskatuMesk wrote: Is it possible to make the ATA missiles attack random targets when they split?
I wondered if you'd want something like that. Here it is.
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Last edited by Xenon on Mon Jul 05, 2010 6:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: SC2 Editor findings

Post by Mr. »

Now I'm having some issues with attachment points on a Thor.

I was able to make a nice missile spam ability, where missiles will launch from the cannons on the top of the Thor, and act exactly the way I want them to, and it is lovely.

But NOW, I want to make another attack, but this one will require triggers, because I want it to be a custom projectile.  I can't figure out a way to find an attachment point in triggers to work from.  I found that I can set a point to a Unit Attachment Point, but I can't figure out how to format it to get it to return something.  Or if it even works at all.

I have tried these formats:
Weapon05
e_attachWeapon05
Ref_Weapon 05
AMFilterWeapon05

and none of them have worked.


I've also discovered that I could make a normal attack, and detect the creation of the projectiles, and launch the custom projectile from that point, except I still won't be able to figure that out, because I can't seem to set the Launch Attachment Query in the Action Actor to anything higher than Weapon04, but I want 05-08. 
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Re: SC2 Editor findings

Post by IskatuMesk »

Yesss, missiles!
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Re: SC2 Editor findings

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

News for bank trigger users from beta Patch 16 or Patch 17.

Now it seem to enforce a limit of around 664k to 800k of file. In terms of key amounts it would range between 8000 and 9000 numbers. With intentionally medium-sized strings (basically 'A' x30 of length), it dropped around to 5553 keys max.

Note that this enforcement is even in-game so that banks cannot be used as huge side data tables any longer. In addition, there is no error returned if it goes over their limit. Your only means to determine if it wasn't added is basically to load the value and compare it to the value you tried to add.

The limit might be annoying for those that want to do large-scale stuff with bank triggers. However it does prevent a player to have a 200 MB bank file to purposely hang the game from starting or screw over a map's initialization due to an endless transfer of data. I also tested the amount of key detected with an inflated size (manually edited bank file) and it seems to skip the extra values.

Also it's still possible to use multiple banks if wanted/needed anyway.

Personally, I think a "open bank with a maximum of X bytes" actions would have been more interesting somehow.
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