Question Thread

[Durandal-Thoth]

  Rather then making 20 topics asking various questions (some of which may be very simple) I figure I'll just make this thread and post various questions as I go along with this mod that I've been making recently. Being isolated from the internet for some time, I picked up modding again to pass the time.

My first problem for today is that I've been turning the reaver into a walking resource depot (By giving it building properties and doing the proper iscripting). After much crashing I successfully got it working in-game, as can be seen in the attached picture.

However, oddly enough, whenever the reaver dies the game crashes. I imagine this is related to my death animation scripting, but I'm really not sure. (I'm not experienced at iscripting at all).

I had been trying to apply the same thing to the Battlecruiser, but since it has no Construction/Building complete animations it can't be done. Is there any way to add those animation scripts to the Cruiser?

Edit- Forgot to actually attach the files.

[IskatuMesk]

Giving units with building properties can do really weird shit. I'm guessing you never changed the reaver's iscript animations to begin with? Then, if it's crashing when it dies, it probably has to do with the building flags, probably something to do with collision.

[Durandal-Thoth]

I just gave the reaver really basic animations so that it wouldn't crash when created/spawned. I just can't quite grasp why it crashes upon dying. Funny thing I noted is that if you place one of my reavers on the map, then move it, the space the unit takes up never moves with the unit, but just stays behind.

I imagine it could have something to do with the LOF or be something race-specific with the animation.

The crash happens when you're looking at it or not, which I've found tends to be iscript related.

[Durandal-Thoth]

Another question.

I recently picked up Firegraft, and am glad to see that it's a step up from memgraft, and works with the latest versions of Starcraft.

I was recently trying to make 3 new button sets that were basically building submenus, but for units. I threw everything into them that I needed, but I don't understand how to get the unit that's using the submenus to actually have them. The requirement and Action functions obviously don't have any reference to the three new submenus that I created; do I have to edit stat_txt.tbl and import that into the data.mpq that firegraft uses? I'm really a total newb to memgraft and firegraft, so bear with me as I don't really know what I'm talking about.

Basically I just want one of my units to use custom sub-menus, without me having to tear up any existing ones to get it working...

[Anonymous]

The crash happens when you're looking at it or not, which I've found tends to be iscript related.

I find the opposite to be true in many instances.

Judging by the wonky collision issues, I'll say your moving building is probably impossible.

edit -

IIRC HKS was trying to make a menu system for the Larva in one of my mods, and we ran across some very peculiar issues with it. The engine wasn't built to have additional submenus here and there. We thought it was possible, but after several repeated failed attempts gave up on it. I wouldn't be surprised if it was impossible. Also note that version 1.15 broke a LOT in starcraft. Perfectly working iscript and other things in HK no longer function correctly in 1.15. For example, the Elite's crit system now spawns overlord overlays for an unknown reason.

I cannot offer any real support for 1.15 because it has been broken beyond belief and there is no doubt other strangeness occuring elsewhere.

[Durandal-Thoth]

Alrighty then, time to canabalize the protoss menus. Hopefully they won't be missed...

Which reminds me, since I'm canabalizing the entire Protoss race and throwing most of their unique units into Terran and Protoss, is there any way to disable them for the race select option when in custom/multiplayer games? Is that controlled by a bin file?

[Lavarinth]

BIN can disable options yes, but for drop down menus such as race select I'm not sure.

[Durandal-Thoth]

For my capital ships, I'm trying to create an ion weapon sort of like the Warp Ray from SC2 or an Ion Frigate from Homeworld, where it would fire a long slender beam and sustain it until it needed to recycle. Is there any way to do this in a low-memory way, so that I don't just mass sprites in a line to emulate the effect, and so that it can end abruptly rather then have the sprites continue to travel on their way as the weapon stops firing?

I was also wondering if anyone knows of an order that causes the unit to fly around the other unit erratically that doesn't cause it to explode or crash (Strafe1 and Strafe2...)

[Taeradun]

Removing a race: if they can't be removed altogether, at least use FireGraft to remap that race's starting units to those of another race so they're still not useable? And won't get used by "Random", though the one replacing them will have twice as much likelihood...
(works best for Protoss Terran cos I dunno what you'd do with the Overlord... Larva would just die I guess, maybe make the Ovie another Larva if that works)

[Durandal-Thoth]

That's a good idea: I hadn't thought of that.

[Xenon]

For the beam, you might be able to use the overlay method used by the Archon beam, but if the range of the weapon is long the beam might end up "hitting" significantly far to the side of the target and look stupid. It might also require an overlay grp bigger than 256x256 and I'm not sure if that would cause problems. Also if the unit using the weapon is off the screen, the beam might not show at all (again, not sure about this).

[Durandal-Thoth]

New problem.

I'm making a custom graphic for a unit, and it sadly does not blend well with the Starcraft Pallette. Is there any way I can go about making it compatible without having to recolor all 17 frames?

[IskatuMesk]

Welcome to Starcraft. What you get is what you have to work with.

[Durandal-Thoth]

So then I don't suppose it would be possible to just modify the pallette itself?

[IskatuMesk]

Not likely. I am pretty confident it is completely hardcoded. And even if you could, you're talking about re-compiling and changing every graphic in the entire game. There are THOUSANDS.