Mesk's Data Editor Challenges

[IskatuMesk]

A while ago I had Xenon create what is basically the Soulsplitter torpedo for the Gahennas BC as a demonstration of the editor's ability to control missiles. Someone eventually came to me and was like LOL THEY MET UR CHALLENGE SC2 CAN DO ANYTHING LOL and I was like OH YEAH? WELL I'VE GOT MORE THAN THAT BITCH.

So here we go. Think you've got balls of steel? Try to create these AO and TOA-canon abilities. Of course, you have to avoid triggering and regions at all costs. I suspect that you won't be able to create some of these to the letter without triggers.

Make them as flashy and amazing as you possibly can. This is basically setting you free to try to push this engine to its limits and make something really fucking epic in the process. HKS and I have already stress tested the engine in the beta, we KNOW it can take a goddamn beating. And I have been assured by a Dev that it's capable of even more than that. Let's find out just how capable. Need ideas? Here you are.

Round 1

Zeus' Propagating Eye of the Storm

Eye of the Storm in AO was originally intended to randomly propagate around the map. The ability creates a large number of storms that last for a randomized duration. The spell originally spawns five storms - One on top of the unit and one west, east, south, and north of the caster by a small distance (enough to make a big storm, basically). The storms were to function like this;

Play randomized animation (lasting anywhere from 2-3 seconds), then run a check;

5% chance to propagate and die (The storm dies, spawns 4 more storms north, west, east, south of itself.)
5% chance to die (Just dies)
90% chance to go back to animation and loop once more.

Ultimately Starcraft has a limited on how far an overlay can spawn from another overlay linked to the original overlay distance from a unit. A stupid, retarded limit that killed an otherwise perfectly doable ability. Instead I ended up with this;

[imgwh 640x480]http://a.imageshack.us/img155/1247/screen61.jpg[/imgwh]

Which eventually crashed SC. So I had to make a watered down version that just spawned a bunch of storms with randomized life.

With this ability I want to test how far you can go with mass effects in sc2 in a relatively controlled environment, and at the same time see one of the abilities rendered impossible by sc1's limitations.

Gull's Shadowflare

A partial recreation of an ability from FF7 and an ability he used in his original inception more than ten years ago. Gull uses Lo`Aummath to create a Shadow Dragon's signature attack, Shadowflare.

This attack rapidly slows down time from 1-2 seconds into a total stop. Projectiles and all, map-wide. During this period it dulls out the map into a bright grayscale. Black flashes appear in a large target location and do massive damage. The screen then flashes and depth of field intensity is jacked up momentarily as color returns to the world and time resumes.

This is the FF7 version, but I'm sure you can make it far more impressive.

FFVII E.Skill: Shadow Flare (2 angles)

Suncrasher

This should be an easy ability to make mechanically, but can you make it look correct?

One of The Great Destroyer's conceptual ultimates was to crash a sun into the planet. Yep! Exactly as it sounds. A minute from casting the entire map is destroyed.

So, the ability is first casted, and everything begins to vibrate. The map will glow brighter and brighter, from orange to white, over the duration of the sun's arrival. Fires will sprout up everywhere, doodads will set on fire (and this should be really easy to do since you can already set shit on fire in sc), and about halfway through enemy units start taking 1% health damage every second. Near the end they are taking 5% health damage every second (most of them will be dead by the time the sun actually hits). Near the end, the entire sky is filled with fire. Water evaporates/turns to lava, lava spouts appear randomly through the map, shit is on fire bro.

I want to see how you can accurately spread randomized effect spawns across a massive environment. There's also the Hell Effect, which just spawns random meteors throughout the map that land and hurt enemies, as well as spawns actual Volcanos, but Suncrasher is ultimately more complex than that but does basically the same thing. Plus I'm not sure how easily you can create a Volcano through JUST the data editor. SO HERE'S YOUR CHANCE!

Firestorm

Back in the wc3 guys there was a dude named JD back on SA. And he made an AoS. Yeah, everyone made an AoS. At one point he had me help him with something. I can't remember what. PR or something.

Anyways, his AoS had one cool ability I've never forgotten. It basically created a Volcano that lifted the caster into the air and shot flaming rocks and shit everywhere. It also spawned a tornado effect and wind effects. Of course, any enemies caught in the volcano got stunned.

Let'see if you can do the same in sc2 with just the data editor AND make it look good.

Nanoflash

TGD's codename for his basic ranged attack in my files is Nano Flash. But it's really called Zahir, Zohar, Koheem. The three spirits of Creation, torn from the elemental fabric of Olympus and bound to his will.

Zahir, Light of the Deep.
Zohar, Darkness of the Heart.
Koheem, Spirit of Fury.

In AO, though, only one spirit is represented in his attacks, and that's Zahir. Each spirit is represented by a basic color palette - Zahir is Fire, Koheem is Protoss-esque Blue, and Zohar is Shadow/Darkness. Pretty simple, yes? It gets more fun, believe me.

In AO, the attack is very simple. It's just Zahir, so it basically fires a huge fiery orb that swings around him and slams into enemies. The impact has a chance to do a variety of things. Each explosion has a radius of basically a BC explosion.

1 - Explode with a spinning fiery vortex; the one that black_dream guy stole for his artillery unit. This does around 25 damage in sc1, 50 seems more appropriate in sc2 for how much health things got now.
2 - Explode into burning embers. This just did 3x damage in sc1, we can make the fiery embers do a DoT to enemies standing in it in sc2 fairly easily.
3 - Had 2 different explosion effects for "critical" impacts. Basically huge fireballs. Did like 3x damage on impact.
4 - Had a chance to "collapse". Created a fiery vortex that collapsed upon itself in around 4-5 seconds. Did 5x damage when it collapsed and exploded very violently.

Now the fun part about randomized projectiles in sc2 is that with my completely uninformed and clueless studying I figured there is probably a way to randomize this kind of stuff, but I have no idea how to randomize GRAPHICS. The biggest thing I have yet to see out of sc2 is randomized anything that isn't trigger based. So we're going to take this to the next fucking level. We're going to make his attack what it should have been in sc2.

The projectile has three forms. It randomizes between these forms when it's first spawned. Sometimes he'll launch a vortex of Fire, sometimes a vortex of Protoss-esque shiny burny Blue, and sometimes a vortex of Shadow. His attacks are ALSO randomized in sc1. He has 4 basic attacks, 3 Storm attacks, and 2 Epic attacks. Each launch different numbers of projectiles in a sequenced fashion. For the time being we won't worry about this, but keep in mind that this projectile can have dozens of itself in the air at once. He isn't called The Great Destroyer for nothing!

For the time being let's just leave the Koheem and Zohar effects to be shiny blue and shadowy evil variants of the Zahir ones. Zohar ones should life-steal and mana steal 10% of their damage.

This alone should be a monumental task and I doubt anyone will step up to it. If you can make these I'll turn them into a video and show your work to the world.

For reference, here's TGD in AO.

Starcraft: The Great Destroyer, Final Boss of Armageddon Onslaught.

[Thalraxal]

A challenge, you say?  Actually, I was planning on making an attack very similar to Zeus' Propagating Eye of the Storm for one of the SC2 projects I was planning, so I'll give that one a shot.  Mine was for a boss fight, and I was planning on using triggers for it (which would make it quite easy to do), but this way does sound like fun.

Also: The Great Destroyer is awesome.

[IskatuMesk]

Did the zappy defeat you?

[Thalraxal]

The zappy has yet defeated me! But I'm still a long, long way from being able to defeat it. The fact that I haven't had as much time/motivation to play around with the editor doesn't help either.

[IskatuMesk]

I see.

Once I'm done with the campaign I'll make a new set of challenges, some of which I'll be trying myself once I figure out what the hell I'm doing.

One of them is a chain tentacle therapy attack.

[Biophysicist]

Hey Iskatu, mind if I link to those videos you recorded of my dudes here?

(Also, this wasn't one of your challenges, but I'm making a "formation" thingy... The example will have four Phoenixes in a plus-sign around a hero Phoenix, and the normal Phoenixes will maintain the same position relative to the hero Phoenix to the best of their ability.)

[IskatuMesk]

go ahead

[Biophysicist]

http://www.youtube.com/user/mancatcher# ... V8oA3hOPOA <= part 1

http://www.youtube.com/user/mancatcher# ... 5TGTe0IrqY <= part 2