Campaign Creations

ok someone explain to me what the FUCK is going on in the Actor editor so I can do something very basic like make a projectile actually shoot from the unit and not the ground.

Xenon! Video tutorial, stat!

Ultimately I want to do stuff like chain tentacle therapy (TENTACLES EVERYWHERE), Wild Mustaches (exactly what it sounds like, wild axes but with broodlings), and Mustache Shuriken, ect.

But I'm having a whale of a time just trying to figure out what the hell any of these collections of random words mean. Bogus? How am I supposed to know what "Bogus" does? It's like they TRIED to make it as vague and confusing as possible.

Someone told me a long time ago this would be comparable to iscript... I want to kill that someone. This thing causes me physical discomfort trying to read it. Most of the sc2mapster posts also cause me physical discomfort. Others just don't help. You know, learning disabilities and all. So put it in a way you'd expect to be teaching someone who hasn't programmed their own game before.

Hey, I told you it was hard to work with.

First off, "bogus" doesn't mean anything; it's a reference to something that doesn't exist. It's used because having a blank reference field in events will make the actor respond to anything.

To fix the attachment points you need to work with an "action" actor, to be specific an attack. There are lots of generic attack actions to look at and copy.

For example, here's the Missile Turret Attack actor:

Token
Attack Effect Bogus (this means it doesn't respond to an attack directly; instant-damage attacks use this field)
Impact Effect Missile Turret - Longbolt Missile (damage) (which effect notifies the impact)
Launch Effect Missile Turret - Longbolt Missile (Launch missile) (which effect notifies the launch)

Events: the most important part of what defines the actor. These values should be automatically changed by modifying the token values above (but it doesn't always work for all events).

Opening events you get:

Effect.LongboltMissileU.Start (this is an event. LongboltMissileU is the damage effect specified above. This event triggers when this effect starts)
At Caster (not sure what effect this has in this context)
FromEffectTreeDescendant (not sure how this works either)
ActionImpact (the action. signifies impact)

(skipping 2 splashdamage events that are irrelevant)

Effect.Bogus.Start (If there was a relevant instant-attack effect it would trigger this)
At Caster
Create

Effect.LongboltMissileLM.Start (This is the launch missile effect. Triggers upon firing the missile)
At Caster
Create (creates this actor unless another is specified. Creates the attack action that determines projectile movement when fired, in this case.

Once you have those, you can experiment with launch and impact assets (sounds and models at launch and impact), and attachment points.

Note that I had to hackjob the impact effect for the splitting missiles because the attack actor didn't seem to recognize it correctly with missiles-firing-missiles.

Okay, so what I get is this.

The big things that start the mini trees aka the parents are the equivalent of iscript headers, right?

So what the hell are effects like Launch Assets (not in the event editor)? I thought those just determine what graphics to spawn, but do their actors also effect how the projectile acts? I'm screwing with the Hybrid's void blast on a carrier and it WAS working fine when I started then just magically started spawning on the ground and I haven't touched any of the events yet.

I'm looking all over to try to find where it could be breaking but I don't see anything that refers to a hardpoint or anything.

I'm pretty sure At Caster means at what incites the actor to be spawned but that's probably wishful thinking.

Big things that start the mini trees? You mean the events? Those are sort of like iscript headers, I guess; they detect the effect or what have you and create the action and stuff. It's what links the action actor to the attack.

Launch assets do just determine graphics/sound, but the actor action includes both launch assets and the attach points/methods for determining the point the projectile launches from.

Also, I think that if there's a second actor action that uses the same launch (or possibly damage) event effect it will break both of them, since that effect will cause the game to create two actor actions at the same time. Did you copy an attack action actor at any point?

I haven't copied anything, I'm just messing with the default weapon.

Your explanation confused me further but I saw that coming. I think it's because I have absolutely no idea how any of this is working. I'm used to BW where you have a header that is triggered by a certain event and then what happens is contained in that header. The fact you have some kind of event that THEN creates the actor really mindfucks me.

Yeah, that event is the thing that creates the actor in the first place. The same applies to unit actors, which have a "unit creation" event that causes the actor to be created.

So uh... I still can't find out why it's appearing on the ground. Argh.

I'm really at a loss to figure out what went wrong, unless you can recount what you did modify.

Holy fuck am I confused.

Ok, so I've been constantly changing the art - missile for this HybridD actor over and over to the scout missile and then to the Loki missile but the damned thing is just not changing ingame at ALL. As it turns out, there's ANOTHER set of actors that don't even get listed or referred by that actor that it's using instead!

Fuck I am confused.

/e uhhh can you not refer to specific hardpoints for stuff? Doesn't that defeat the entire purpose of hardpoints to begin with?

You probably can refer to specific hardpoints but I'm not sure how. Attachment patterns have something to do with picking hardpoints in a pattern (like the missile turret barrels in series) but I don't know how those work either.

Anyway your problem may be your modifications to the art-missile field, which appears very badly misnamed. This seems to refer to the attack actor I mentioned, not the model for the missile. Reset it to default. The missile actor/model depends on the missile unit type, which is determined by "Ammo Unit" in the launch missile effect in Effects.

Well that explains that. I'm looking for references to hardpoints but I don't see any. I have this horrifying feeling it's based on names and bone names. Ugh...

I'm looking at turrets and I don't see any options for pitch. It doesn't look like the game supports pitch movement on turrets or units to attack? A HUGE limitation and one I was extremely worried about.

/e Yes, changing that missile reference back fixed it. T.T why is this such a mess

Turret actors have a "pitch query" field used to determine pitch, but for all the ones I can find it's unused. I tried putting in the existing TurretY entry (since yaw is TurretZ) but the missile turret's pitch didn't change.

Okay. So I think I have an extremely unstable and volatile grip of how to make stuff not appear underneath a unit. But I don't know how to start trying to expand this.

So, I want to make something that seems fairly basic. I want to make the Pit Lord's meteor shower from AO. Hopefully you know what I'm talking about. Basically, a cluster of fireballs spawn in the sky and rain down in randomized locations around the target, each dealing amounts of splash damage. Mal`Ash has a bigger variant called Comet Storm or somesuch. But we'll worry about his version after (after I get a graphic ingame for him... )

Now with sc2 we have the opportunity to do something a bit better.

For starters we need a fireball graphic. Something sufficiently glowy. Then we need sounds - that will be tough, finding sounds like that.

Ideally I'd like the attack to work a bit like how Mal`Ash's does in AO, and make something much fancier for his new attack.

Basically, burning clouds appear in the sky after the attack is initiated. I have absolutely no idea if I can make burning clouds or lightning without custom models right now, but let's humor the idea. Anyways, 2-3 seconds after they appear, they shoot out about 6-8 meteors that come down and explode in random locations around and on the target. For the explosion, we could use something that produces a neat fiery shockwave and the lava burst doodad thing that shoots rocks.

So the questions are,

How do I do any of this? I presume you need an actor for the initial attack that somehow tells it to wait while it spawns the cloud, then launches the "create" command to spawn the meteorites. Then the meteors are just basic missiles that target "points" or something (I'll have to take a look at the cluster munitions again). Then, when they explode, we somehow have to spawn two effects instead of just one.

Ho hum.

Also, I have ZERO idea how this will react to "missing" air units."

You can't delay the projectile with actors; you need a "create persistent" effect to do that.

I've been messing around with this but can't get the missile to launch from the correct location. I probably can't do it without a lot more info on "scopes" and other stuff that you have to type in a text box. Ugh.

Argh.

Can't you like, create one missile that doesn't move anywhere and has a timer before it explodes, then basically do what you did with the cluster munition and spawn the real missiles from its death?

Also...

http://a.imageshack.us/img339/6104/scre ... 409152.jpg