Modding thread

[Lavarinth]

I am curious to know if it's possible to build more than 2 units at once from a same building somehow (with that ability from the barracks' Reactor).

No, it isn't. Totally hardcoded. Sorry ricky.

For now. Keep in mind we don't HAVE modding tools yet.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

While there might be modding tools that might do that in the future, I mostly wanted to know if there was a easy way to do it right now.

That's especially considering that it is for a future SC2 multiplayer map. I don't want to involve any advanced modding stuff (implying special exe files and such) in it. I also intend to pull it out in the first 2-3 weeks of retail release (especially for event play) thus sooner than any modding tools capable to do it.

By the way Mesk, just to be 100% sure, the double-train ability does work directly on buildings right (as in you aren't forced to rely on an add-on to do it)?

So far, thanks for the information since it does help to adjust my plans in consequence. While I was hoping for more than dual-train, I kind of expected it would be capped to dual-train anyway.

Oh yeah, when I think of it ... I presume dual-train also allow to "dual-research"? As in, in slot #1, it could train or research and in slot #2, it could train or research. I am assuming it's possible since both training and research shares the same queue.

[IskatuMesk]

HKS just tried it. Totally not possible. Gotta redo your entire map plan ricky. I'm sorry.

[Lavarinth]

XML is simpler than GUI? Back to the drawing board for me!

[UntamedLoli]

SC2 Beta Modding - Multiqueue

[Xenon]

Looks like it's just the interface that isn't designed to show more than 2 queues. I'm not sure anyone has bothered trying to mod the UI yet, and I think Blizzard said that UI modding isn't covered by the editor.

Edit: Lol, did you make the AI build all those flying CCs or are they pre-placed?

[IskatuMesk]

I doubt it will be, but it looks like the interface is largely comprised of XML and various flash/png files. You should be able to rearrange it as you desire a bit like WoW.

/e

and .sc2layout which is probably something renamed like half the sc2 files.

[UntamedLoli]

I tried making it show 4 active queues but it didn't really work, there might be something that needs to be changed in another file but I havn't seen it yet.

[imgwh 640x400]http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/9504/s ... 421499.jpg[/imgwh]

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Well, it's actually better than I hoped. If it's just the interface then it's possible to live with that especially with the map setup I intend to have.

To be more precise, I could still implant multi-queue and it doesn't matter too much if the UI doesn't show it. It is for the merchants of my map plans. They are not in combat and they are very likely to mass train normal units anyway.

My other possibility is to use dual build and either 1) rely on triggers to give an "headstart" when starting to train a unit OR 2) have a permanent chrono boost effect via a dummy unit on the training buildings for even quicker training.

EDIT :

Now my next modding task for you HKS is the following :

1) Modify bunker ability to be able to carry at least 2 battlecruisers
2) Add modified bunker ability on battlecruiser unit-type
3) Start some dummy game and have 7 of those battlecruisers
4) Have BC #6 and #7 enter into #3
5) Have BC #5 and #4 enter into #2
6) Have BC #2 and #3 enter into #1
7) Fly #1 around and shoot stuff
8) Notice if you see only BC #2 and #3 extra shots OR if you see also #4, #5, #6 and #7 (based on the number of shots).

EDIT 2 :

For hilarity's sake, you can also modify a CC with an insane bunker capacity (note that it might conflict with default load/transport). Load it with LOTS of units and then lift it up and shoot stuff with it.

[UntamedLoli]

SC2 Beta Modding - Battlecruiser

For a currently unknown reason right clicking to move one of the Battlecruisers will crash so I had to use the actual button, probobly related to the bunkers attack ability somehow.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Good, good. *Opens his book of mod ideas for testing*

Here's a LOT of potential modding things to poke about.

The first ones are the "easier" ones but still have some interest while the later ones are likely to be harder to pull off.

***GENERIC***

1) Show absolute highest resource cap possible for minerals/gas. Note that even in WC3, there was a standard "cap" but you could modify it to have that extra 1 or 2 digit of resource cap. I imply to reach those extra digits if possible via modding.

If some reason that you can reach a ridiculously long limit that shows up oddly (shows up letters and such), show both the highest "screwed up" you can reach and the highest "looking normal" one.

2) Show absolute max of HP, shields and energy.

Similar to #1 (insane high number) but same for a unit's HP, shields and energy. If it's not shown like in WC3 for high numbers, try with a number that we actually see (ex : all numbers of 1 to show most digits).

3) Show absolute max supply

With modding, show the highest supply cap possible.

4) Does negative HP regeneration can kill you?

Set some unit with a high negative HP regeneration to see if it will die or stay at 1 HP.

5) Low damage vs super high armor = no damage?

Set some unit with a low damage vs a unit with a higher armor than it. Check if the concrete damage seems to be 0.0, 0.5 (SC1-like) or 1.0 or any other value.

6) Sensor Tower fiddling

Modify the sensor tower's special detection  to :
1) To detect but WITHOUT showing the "revealing" circle (both on mini-map and on game screen).

Test :
2) See if the sensor tower can "detect" (as red "dots") invisible units while said units are inside normal visual range.
(This test is important for me since one of my map ideas depends on that for a specific case).

7) Stat Tooltip fiddling

Show a unit's or ability's tooltip that shows as many of them as possible : Mineral Cost, Gas Cost, 3rd ressource type, Time, Energy Cost, Health Cost (Stimpack-like), Shields Cost, whatever other stat you can fit in without crashing.

8) Extra building menus

Try to have a worker with more than 2 building menus (Basic and Advanced).

9) Different Building Methods in one

Try to see if you can make a different race worker act like another race worker for a specific building.

For example, a drone to attempt to build a CC like a SCV plus to build a Nexus like a probe while building the rest of its Zerg buildings the "Zerg" way.

10) Literally construct units

Construct units that are normally trained by buildings. Try various workers with different races' units.

For example, a Probe that constructs a marine like if it was a protoss building.

11) Train buildings

Pretty much the opposite of #10, make buildings train buildings like if they were normal units.

***SPECIAL***

12) I heard that Blizzard did introduce a 3rd resource type.

If it's possible then try to make as many of those as possible :
1) Show up the 3rd resource type on the screen along side minerals and gas.
2) Make the 3rd resource type as minable (probably easier to base it on rich mineral chunks)
3) Actually mine the resource.
4) Show tooltips of units requiring the 3rd resource type as cost.
5) Train fully units that uses the 3rd resource type as cost, also cancel training of some (in case of an odd crash or odd bugs)
6) Repair units that uses the 3rd resource type (if there is a separate "repair cost", assign some of 3rd resource type to it) so we see a diminish of the 3rd resource type while repairing.

13) Make add-ons that make their own add-ons that make their own add-ons ... then if "given effects" are recursive.

Preferably just make a specific add-on that can create itself as its add-on.

Try to find an ability that "carry over" from add-on to building (maybe a +1 armor?) so you can test if a add-on chain transfer.

Ex : If Main Building -> Add-on #1 -> Add-on #2 -> Add-on #3 -> Add-on #4
Thus check if add-on #4 has a carry over of "Armor +1"
... thus add-on #3 would have its armor rating improved by 1.
... thus add-on #2 would have its armor rating improved by 2.
... thus add-on #1 would have its armor rating improved by 3.
... thus main building would have its armor rating improved by 4.

14) Make a building with 2+ add-ons directly on it

Playing again with add-ons but this time, to allow a building to have 2+ addons.

Test if :

1) You can build exactly 1 of each add-on. Each add-on would have a predetermined physical position to avoid placement issues.

Ex : Barracks <--- Reactor (attached on "top-right" side of barracks)
                      <--- Tech Lab (attached on "bottom-right" side of barracks)

2) Can build any add-on over and over on the same spot. Each add-on in this case won't take "physical" space so you can stack them up infinitely if wanted. Check if they all properly give their "carry over" ability (like dual build from reactor but one that have a stackable effect).

15) Attack fiddlings

Fiddle the following on a unit :
1) Set a ridiculously high number of attacks possible on a unit (ex : 100).
2) Add a lot of types of attack possible on a unit. Preferably include special kinds such as Interceptors as well.
3) Speaking of interceptors, increase the number of possible interceptors (higher than 8, preferably 20-30).
4) Might as well try to put 2+ "kinds" of interceptors on a same unit. Use different models of the other kinds so we can see the difference.
5) For interceptors, try one kind with "units" instead of "projectiles" to see if they get targeted normally by enemy units.
6) Add as many "attack bonuses" as possible on a unit's attack (ex : +6 vs Light, +8 vs Psychic, +10 vs Structure, etc. etc.)

16) Unit attachment test

If you know somehow how to attach units (that can fire and/or do auto-cast spells) to another unit. Go ahead and try it.

Preferably do it with "obvious" units (ex : Marines, Medivac for healing, etc.).

Also test if an attached unit doesn't have invulnerability somehow, see if they can be auto-fired on and get killed.

Also have another unit with no-model attached units that fires or do stuff. Based on WC3, it's possible if you set an invalid model path thus causing to have no model used for that unit in-game.

***CRASHING/ODD TESTS***

Most of them rely that you can somehow modify core triggers in the beta.

17) Negative array crash attempt
Have an array variable and try to refer to [-1] as its index to attempt an ArrayOutOfBounds kind of error. In WC3, it did crash the game until later patches prevented that.

18) Infinite Loop crash attempt
Have an infinite loop (ex : while (true == true){} ) in the core triggers. See if it will just crash SC2, freeze your computer or that somehow SC2 prevent any of those.

19) Negative values crash attempt
Have units/buildings costing negative minerals, negative gas, negative 3rd type ressource, negative energy cost, negative build time, negative health cost, negative shields cost. Then try training them and see which odd results from them.

20) Bunker + Transport crash attempt
See if putting both bunker and transport capacities on a same unit will crash the game after trying to load into said unit.

[Taeradun]

jesus

[IskatuMesk]

jesus

WHAT DO YOU WANT THIS TIME

[Ricky_Honejasi]

After taking a good little rest, I still have a few more ideas. Likely to have more over time.

B1) Determine max array size

1) Try the largest array of INTEGER variable you can.
2) Do a loop from [ 0 ] to whatever max to write 1 as a value in each array index
3) In the same loop, check if variable was affected to 1.
  If it was affected, continue the loop to affect the next number to 1
  If it wasn't affected, modify the minerals to the array index affected and exit the loop (you can use direct show text if you know somehow)

  XXXX being the last index you tried to affect but didn't affect in the end.

Example :

Code: Select all

int maxArray = 1000000; //Reduce if it crashes for max array size
int [] testInt = new int[maxArray];
for (int i = 0; i < maxArray; i++){
     testInt[i] = 1;
     if (! (testInt[i] == 1)){
        //Show i in some form or another (inside text message, mineral count, etc.)
        i = maxArray; //To exit loop earlier
    }
    if (i == (maxArray - 1)){
      //Show (maxArray - 1) as value in some form or another
   }
}

  In WC3, the last valid index was around 8100-8200.

  In previous versions of WC3, going OutOfBounds on the right did crash the game.
  In newer versions of WC3, it didn't affect the values but didn't crash the game.

B2) Change models' % size

Similar in WC3 where you can change the % model size to make them smaller or bigger.

If you can change individual %s of X,Y,Z, do it.

Although, for the extremes ...
1)  do a model at 5-10% size but still noticeable on the screen.
2)  do another at 300-600% size, also test which % you can have without having the model glitch. Would be interresting to see how SC2 handles oversized models visual-wise.

B3) Have brand new unit flags

We know the various unit flags such as "Light", "Biological", etc.

Now the idea is to have a brand new one (not a modified existent one) and add it to some unit. It could be called "Loladin".

Also modify another unit to have an attack bonus against said new unit flag (give it like +30 damage vs "Loladins", something noticeable basically) and use it to fire on the other one.

B4) Minimum/Maximum Caps of Movement Speed AND Turning Speed?

Fairly self-explanatory overall. Would be nice to see if it's possible to have a really high maximum moving speed (unlike WC3's 512 speed limit cap).

Also would be nice to see if there is huge ship with a VERY slow turning speed that actually take a full minute or two just turn a 180 degrees. Even in WC3, the best case scenario was like 10-15 seconds of very slow turning speed.

Also try 0.00 turning speed to see if it actually don't turn at all (seems ridiculous but can be important for units turned into buildings, although I think it mostly depends on having the Move ability or not).

B5) Modding a 4th race?

We did hear of the possibility that you can mod a 4th race. Thus maybe it's actually already possible ...

So in that regards ...

1) Make the race selectable while still being able to pick Terran, Zerg, Protoss or Random in the race selection.
2) Preferably use one of those neutral buildings at the main building just to make it clear that it's a new race and not a modified existant race along with a very limited tech-tree (just some barracks-equivalent and that's it, no point trying to make a full tech-tree).

EDIT :

B6) 2D and 3D arrays?

Essentially test if we can use 2D and 3D arrays in SC2.

Code: Select all

int maxArray = 10000;
int [][] test2D = new int[maxArray][maxArray];
int [][][] test3D = new int[maxArray][maxArray][maxArray];

[UntamedLoli]

1) ~1316100000, displays ingame as [imgwh 267x32]http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/7782/resources.png[/imgwh]

2) [imgwh 495x404]http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/1473/96973560.png[/imgwh]

3) [imgwh 141x32]http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/9733/foodu.png[/imgwh] (~520015) Units can only supply a max of 10000 each.

4) [imgwh 387x330]http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/5138/deadx.png[/imgwh]

5)

Code: Select all

        <DamageMinimum value="0.5"/>

6) Yes and Yes.

7) [imgwh 447x268]http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/2886/cost.png[/imgwh] That blue square is shields, I'm pretty sure enabling more than Minerals and Vespene isn't possible currently. (TBA)

8) [imgwh 640x583]http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/2893/cardl.png[/imgwh]

9) SCV will Warp in buildings like a Probe or Morph into them like a Drone.

10) Units built by other units like buildings (at least by how I did) build instantly but works fine, I'm pretty sure its related to not having an in-construction anim set. (TBA)

11) Training buildings works just like training a unit, SC2 will freeze the current queue if theres no exit access.

12) See 7 (TBA)

13 and 14) Still trying to find out how addons work in the first place. (TBA)

15-20+B1 and B6) TBA, probobly not doing variable\C related things.

B2) [imgwh 640x521]http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/9508/scale.png[/imgwh]

B3) Probobly not possible without the editor (TBA)

B4) I set the ghost to have 5000 movement speed and it would cross a 128x128 (i think) map corner to corner in less than 2 seconds, (air) units will either not move at all or disable turning altogether which can be set as a flag and slide if the values are too low, they will still slide in the direction you want while moving but turn very slowly.

B5) Potentially also not possible currently without the editor, I've tried alot of things and the only person I've seen have another race isn't using Battle.net. (TBA)


EDIT: Lol the only other 2 people modding it are on cracked versions.