My current decisions are as follows.
- possess uses a timed recall so it doesn't cover you character completely.
- arrows will use powerup deaths. 1 for strafe, 9 for snipe, and 1 underneath the cloaked air periodically for the 3rd bow
- drag will now use feedback, which was initially an arrow animation
That leaves me with uninvinc. I'm still not sure what would work here. Restore is looking to be ridiculously hard to set up, so I'm leaning away from it. More suggestions are welcome.
Note that I have read the Visual Effects sticky in the terrain forum. I basically have several situations where I'm looking to modify my special effects. I need advice on them.
Requirements for Animation:
1) Animation must not get in the way (like taking up room via unit explosions)
2) Animation must not confuse the player (using hallucs for too many things, for example, can confuse people visually)
What I've used already:
- Mind Control (activates during transformations)
- Recall (for possession, both on the target and on the main hero unit)
- Scarab Explosion (for the scarab spell upon completion)
- Halluc Explosion (for the scarab spell, explosions occur during the casting delay to signify location and timing)
- Cloaked Mutalisk (for the cyclone armor, mutas follow hero and attack enemies)
- Lurker Spikes (for fissure, lurkers continually attack in the same direction even if no enemies are there)
- Decloak (for pet, which are air units, switching)
- Feedback (planned for drag, which drags units near the pet with it as it moves)
- Mine explosion (planned for traps, will occur when casting the zerg egg and as an attack on canceling it)
- Exploding Burrowed Lurkers (for summoning infested kerrigan and infested terran)
- Exploding Sunken Colonies (for sunken colony summoning)
- Protoss Shield Damage (for when the defiler, sunken colony, or infes kerrigan teleports)
- Irradiate (for death and decay spell, up to 44 irradiated scourges)
What I need:
1) I have a spell called possess. It gives control of an enemy unit to you and gives your main hero to p12. It is timed. A recall animation is used once on possessing and once on un-possessing. The problem is that although it is immediately obvious for that player that he's possessing, it isn't obvious to other players. I need an animation at player 1's hero owned by P12 that looks like possession. I tried continuous recalling, but that made it impossible to see if your hero was under attack. I also tried shield battery animations, but apparently the sparkles don't last enough when you move the stacked dt back and forth (they disappear after like 1 frame). What else can I use?
2) I have a transformation spell that transforms your hero into another unit. When this happens, a mind control animation runs on a cloaked stacked Queen above your hero. One of these forms has a 1 second invulnerability period when you transform into him. I need an animation to show people that the invincibility has worn off. I tried decloaking on transform, but the initial MC animation overrides it too much. I used burrowed halluc explosion, but that was confusing as hallucs are used for other spells. I also tried using a smaller MC animation on a burrowed lurker beneath the unit, but the unit covers the animation so it's really really hard to see.
3) I have a spell that moves up to 11 stacked ghosts on top of your stacked ghost hero to attack. It's supposed to be like a flurry of arrows. I also have a spell that moves 1 different stacked ghost on top of your stacked ghost hero to attack. They need animations. Note that the hero cannot move during these attacks. I was thinking of using a continually unburrowing ling underneath the hero so the dust clouds symbolized a flurry of arrows, but I'm not sure how that will turn out. If worst comes to worst though, I'll just leave it at a sound effect, but a visual confirmation would be nice.
4) One of the players has a pet air unit. I have a drag spell that moves units for both allies and enemies underneath to itself each time it moves. It is timed. I need an animation to show that it is in the dragging state. The pet is not stacked. The animation must work on all terrain (so ground is out) and yet not displace if other air units are nearby (stacked unit based animation or something naturally stacked). I'm thinking of using disable enable enable cloaked air that still have shadows continually order moved to the pet. If the shadow is dark enough, it might work. However, I'm not sure what units I can use for this that don't have flapping idle animations (queens and mutas have wierd idle animations).
Thanks!
Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 21 2008, 9:47 am by SelfPossessed.
None.