Defiler Bone Samples...

[RazorclawX]

I'm really annoyed at how the Upgrade system is handled. Instead of having it handled per unit like it is in Warcraft 3, it's handled per upgrade. While in theory it makes things cleaner if you want only certain units to have an upgrade... the number of things you have to do just to put a weapon upgrade for one unit is staggering.

One of the things I figured out is the Infestor's beta ability Frenzy doesn't work by default, because the ability got co-opted into a passive for the Ultralisk.

Another thing I noticed is some of the classic units were CLEARLY in the editor at some point because of all the artifacts that weren't removed (found partial weapons for the Guardian and the Devourer, in fact). I have a feeling the classic units will show up again in a later expansion.

Oh yeah, I finally figured out what Duke's Revenge stuff was for... it's for the Jackson's Revenge battlecruiser merc, just a different name.


I made the Swarm Guardian into a normal unit, morphable from the Mutalisk. It's pretty much just like the classic Guardian, though, but the steps you have to go through to make it work are interesting. It took me a while to figure out how to get rid of the Mutalisk graphic when morphing into a cocoon, but studying the Corruptor -> Brood Lord morph was very helpful (although it COULD be easier to transfer the animations over if Blizzard thought of it)

[RazorclawX]

I remade Stasis Field, Siphon Life, and Lockdown in the editor. All of them had broken leftover fragments in the editor, so I took what they had and with trial and error I got all three of them working.

Siphon Life was a major pain in the ass because I had to figure out how Blizzard moved Zerg Tentacles. It's actually kind of ingenious because they fire out an invisible missile and the tentacle just tracks that.

[IskatuMesk]

Siphon Life was a major pain in the ass because I had to figure out how Blizzard moved Zerg Tentacles. It's actually kind of ingenious because they fire out an invisible missile and the tentacle just tracks that.

That's kind of interesting. I wonder if you can just have tentacles fly all over the place, like the black cables in UT3.

[Whiplash!]

Are you sure about the collosus and void ray rcx? I'm not completely sure but I recall seeing "dark" versions of those in the campaign on brutal difficulty. You could always use the hero void ray for a "dark" version of the void ray as well I suppose, and reskins wouldn't be too difficult either I suppose.

[RazorclawX]

I remade the Defiler Dark Swarm and Plague. I know a lot of you were expecting me to finish those first, but there were technical arrangements I had to get around first. With Dark Swarm there simply isn't any good graphic you can use, so it looks like a giant green force bubble.

With Plague I had to actually look up what it did exactly. It took me a bit to figure out how to make it not kill anything (it's actually very simple) and a lot longer to realize it wasn't supposed to drain Protoss Shields (also very simple to fix). The hardest part was actually making an appropriate graphic-- I found out you need to create a new Actor Event to change the model's color (it's currently a RED Corruption debuff which looks vile and nasty).

I'm starting to think I should release a 'standard' includes package when I'm done with the remade abilities.

I found an ability called Flare in the editor, obviously incomplete. According to the Starcraft 2 wiki it was an ability the Medic used to have in lieu of Optical Flare which is simply a poor man's Scanner Sweep. Easily done.

[RazorclawX]

I believe I finished the remaining Starcraft spells; I started working on Valkyrie Halo Rockets and Devourer's Corrosive Acid, but I haven't done much with them. Corrosive Acid is perhaps the most annoying thing ever because I believe you have to do a set of Effects for each stack of the spores, which is obnoxious. I found out later that Blizzard was intending to implement it as an Overseer ability with a base 5 damage boost, so that's what I decided to stick with.

Halo rockets... I just copied the Missile Turret upgrade from the campaign, as it does reasonably the same thing. The only thing it doesn't do is have missiles flying circles around things. Who cares; close enough.

I haven't given much thought about making a Reaver to be honest.

Spawn Broodlings actually gave me a lot of trouble until I realized it wasn't as complicated as it initially looked, but it IS the first ability I handled that actually made another unit (well, at least, since I attempted the Infested Terrans back in the beta).

Restoration... I had to add a Validator on abilities it can Remove because the built in flag for Restorable doesn't work.

Then I started implementing other abilities Blizzard removed from SC2: Phase Shift and Time Rift for the High Templar work reasonably well (well, Time Rift is pretty much just like the Psi Disrupter effect). It turned out most of Phase Shift was already still in the editor, so I fixed it all up. It actually seems neat, but overall it's like the Banish spell in Warcraft 3.

I started work on Molecular Disruptor, but then I realized for that ability I run into the same problem as the Devourer's attack. I've placed this on hold for the moment until I figure out how to insert a Break function in the Effect loop somehow.

[Alevice]

I wish I had retail with me, but a wild ass guessing for a break function could be a validator for a dummy buff for the periodic effect to run.

It's pretty cool you are remaking most spells. Back in beta, I never figured out a clean way to make Plague ignore shields and damage hp directly.

Any chnace to see those in a video or something?

[Xenon]

You can set the amount of allowed stacks for a buff. I tested the damage modifier and it appears to stack correctly.

As for molecular disruptor, does the projectile have the correct launch/impact points if it uses the same effect over and over again? I know the Mutalisk shot uses 3 different effects.

[RazorclawX]

Inevitably it didn't work out correctly and I scrapped it because the bounces would always originate from the caster, which isn't what I wanted. What I did find out though is Events run through Apply Behavior will use the unit with the Buff from Apply Behavior as a NEW point of origin (referenced as the new 'Source Unit' instead of the Caster; normally the Source and Caster would be the same). So when I finished Molecular Disruptor it's a variant of the Mutalisk attack with four bounces that starts damage from 40 and goes down to 10, with a total of 100 damage across four units instead of being a pingpong ball that hits 10 damage each on 10 guys (which, now that I think about it, does actually kind of suck unless you spam the hell out of the spell).

It's pretty cool you are remaking most spells. Back in beta, I never figured out a clean way to make Plague ignore shields and damage hp directly.

The Event Damage has a section for flags; I'm not entirely sure what most of them do, but checking the flag Kill will instantly kill the target; Live will not allow the damage to kill the target (that is the key for Plague working). No Absorb Shields will not damage shields, and similarly No Absorb Life and No Absorb Energy do the same for their respective areas (No Absorb Life know is at least used in the Leech ability as a way to keep it from damaging the unit while it drains energy).

I'm not entirely sure what the other flags do, and I suspect most of them will go unused, just as how the Restorable flag doesn't work.


ED: Oh yeah. The Infestor's old ability, Disease, was apparently exactly like Plague.

[RazorclawX]

Revision on the Restoration spell... it turns out in order to make something Restorable, you have to use the Effect: REMOVE Behavior in order to remove behaviors flagged as 'Restorable.'

Also, I finally got my Defensive Matrix (SV version) working right after working on it for hours. It turns out I had a flag checked which I shouldn't have flagged. The only problem is EVERY shield effect is the same, so you can't cast it on anything that already has a shield, such as the Protoss.

[Xenon]

The behavior damage modifier fields mention something about the damage response being "exhausted" suggesting it can be given a limit to the total amount of damage negated (and therefore be used to make d-matrix that works on top of shields), but I haven't tried to figure that out yet.

[Quirriff]

Since this is all great, it would be helpful when you're finished to upload a map with all these changes in, i'm sure we will all apprciate it.

As for defensive matrix, can't you make it a temp buff to a unit maximum shields so it works on protoss, as in Add 200 sp instead of set to, just an idea. I don't have the editor in front of me.

[RazorclawX]

Since this is all great, it would be helpful when you're finished to upload a map with all these changes in, i'm sure we will all apprciate it.

That's more or less my intention.

As for defensive matrix, can't you make it a temp buff to a unit maximum shields so it works on protoss, as in Add 200 sp instead of set to, just an idea. I don't have the editor in front of me.

I haven't thought of a good way to do that which won't mess up the Protoss unit's default Shield loadout.

Anyway, I spent the last couple hours working on the REAVER. It's not perfect (especially not graphically) but it does work. I found out that Blizzard intended to give Reavers a passive that made them move slower if they were building Scarabs, so I managed to implement that as well (it's only a 30% speed loss, but it is noticeable for something that slow to begin with).

[RazorclawX]

More pictures

[RazorclawX]

Even more pictures (site has 5 attachment limit btw)