If, for the point #1, you're talking of dynamically updated tooltips that gives you the damage of the effect, it's purely a mix of "Combine Text", "Convert Integer" and "Set Dialog Item Tooltips".
Go take a look at Swarmed Heroes' triggers to see how I did it.
However, if you're talking of getting the damage value directly from the Data Editor, I remember seeing some syntax in a button's tooltips that was converting a value from the Data Editor into text.

Yeah, I'm doing everything through the Data Editor for my abilities so I want to avoid using Triggers for that.

EDIT:
Also, I forgot to mention that I've also figured out my inventory system finally (and the type of equipment a player can purchase). Basically each mercenary will have:

• 1 Weapon Slot (modifies base damage)
  
• 1 Weapon Addon Slot (can modify base damage, attack speed, or range)
  
• 1 Armor Slot (modifies base armor)
  
• 1 Armor Addon Slot (can modify base armor, movement speed, or health)
  
• 2 Accessory Slots (modifies custom attributes)
  

Essentially, players can purchase weapons and armor over the course of the game. These items cannot be upgraded and would have to be replaced with more expensive, but potentially better items. There is a downside to some items, and that is that some may have negative effects. For example heavier armor may slow the mercenary a bit or a bigger gun may require a shorter range.

The weapon and armor addons are basic additions that are "attached" to the armor and only modify one stat. These cannot be upgraded, either, and would need to be replaced. I may allow these to be stored so you don't have to constantly purchase the same addons over and over again if you want them to change them out. Despite being "attached" to armor or weapons, these addons will not disappear if you sell your existing armor or weapon.

The accessories vary based on what you need. Some will simply enhance your mercenary's attributes while others have the power to heal, add lives, or possibly reduce cooldowns. In this map, attributes basically modify similar stats as the above addons, but have somewhat different effects. While the addons modify only one stat at a time and at the same base value, accessories can modify multiple attributes and can be upgraded. Certain accessories can also be combined to form more powerful accessories as well. They could potentially also modify the power of abilities, if I ever decide that I want to learn more about doing that.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 13 2010, 10:44 pm by DevliN.

At a curiosity how are you making items attached onto players? are you adding them as a behavioral thing or a veterancy?

I believe that it is possible to have the sprite of the hero's attack switched for a stronger attack at the last secound but it creates a immense amount of lag in multiplayer...

My original thought was that the weapons just increase the damage stat and don't do anything to the actual attack animation. I may look into creating custom weapons for the more powerful ones, but for now it is just going to be a stat increase.

As for how the inventory is put together, I was just going to create items that buff (via behaviors) the unit wearing them. Or am I not getting your question?

EDIT:
After rereading it I think I understand what you mean. Basically I'm making a ton of weapons and armor for each mercenary in the Data Editor (as in making them into items, and attaching those items to "Item Units"). I played around with the Inventory system in the Data Editor, and I'm not a huge fan of it, so I'm going to make the actual inventory with Triggers. That will also just make it easier on me when I need items to be sold back to get better ones.

And as for attack animations go, they may vary based on the weapon. For the most part I'll be sticking with whatever the normal attack is for units (i.e. I wont be giving the Psionic Tactician a gun Weapon, and at the same time I wont be giving the Mech Operative psi blades as a Weapon), but I may get fancy with some of the more expensive weapons and add new effects to them. I haven't really decided on that one just yet.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 14 2010, 2:49 pm by DevliN.

You pretty much understood what i said... seems interesting enough to keep my attention.

Quick update, I thought it would be better to create my units from scratch rather than continuing to just update existing renamed units. Unfortunately I've now come across some weird issue where my Mech Operative creates an additional Viking with it when it is created on the map. I can't seem to find any Event that would do that under the actor, and as far as I can tell there is nothing else on the new unit that is linked to the Viking unit other than them using the same model. So that'd odd.

As of right now I also only have 4 attribute stats that I originally added for equipment to affect (attack speed, health, damage, and movement speed). I want the weapon choice to affect attack speed, range, and damage. I want the armor choice to affect armor, movement speed, and possibly health (or health regeneration). The weapon and armor addons only modify one of these stats each. The accessories were originally going to increase these attributes even more, but I'm thinking about scrapping that idea since I want the accessories to be something else, not just additional armor or something like that. That said, I'm thinking about making a lot of them have active on-use abilities with long cooldowns that may help in some way. For example:

• One might add a shield (and maybe replenish the shield based on damage dealt when the accessory is used).
  
• One might add radar capabilities.
  
• One might add sight range.
  
• One might act as a potion with vital regen capabilities.
  
• One might increase movement speed for a short time.
  

I'm still thinking a lot about this, though. For as much as I love a game where you just kill lots of units and upgrade armor, that gets boring after a while. It used to take 2 hours to beat Normandy Invasion (that was the timer, i believe) and my goal is to make this as riveting so people would be willing to stick with it for a while.

EDIT:
Fixed the issue with the double Viking. Somehow a regular Viking was created under my test Viking on the map. All is well now.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 15 2010, 3:18 am by DevliN.

Another quick update. I have the Missile Array, Laser Cannon, and Shockwave abilities done on the Mech Operative. Missile Array seems to be the only one working perfectly, though. Shockwave removes the unit's equipment for some reason, and Laser Cannon's cursor model wont disappear at all. So that's been really disappointing. I can remove the cursor model for the Laser Cannon ability, I suppose, but I needed that model for other abilities for other units as well. The Shockwave thing I don't get at all. Perhaps if I do the inventory completely in Triggers this wont be an issue. I have no idea.

I've also started to put values into some abilities now that I have a general idea of how much health the enemy cannon fodder has. I may look into making an ability's damage increase (if a player buys a +ability power item or something), but I'm not entirely sure how to do that. Maybe a behavior attribute linked to the ability can change that. I have no idea yet.

EDIT:
I figured out a way to apply bonus damage to an ability through triggers (basically if a unit takes damage from the ability's Damage effect, add more based on the bonus ability power attribute). I'm not sure if I want to go this route yet (considering I'm attempting to do as much as I can in the Data Editor rather than relying on triggers), but maybe that'll change.

EDIT2:
After a long and tedious battle, I finally finished the Mech's "Self-Repair" ability. I'm also going to experiment a bit with a trigger-based inventory system, but in the meantime I just left the default system in place. Next I'll attempt to tackle the Mech's "Flight" ability, which I have a feeling will give me issues. Ideally, it will morph into flight form, fly to the target point, and morph back. Unless I perhaps make it a multi-phase ability, I'm gonna have to heavily play with events, I have a feeling. Come to think of it, I could probably change the actor's events so that when the ability is cast, the morph animation plays, and then after moving to the location (when the ability ends), it will morph back. I hope that is less complicated than I'm assuming.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 18 2010, 1:15 pm by DevliN.

Update:
I finished the Assault Rally, Incendiary Rounds, Rocket Leap, and Speed Burst abilities for the Assault Commander. I have yet to try to do the Mech's Flight ability, and I still don't have a fifth for the Assault Commander, so I'll probably move on to the Psionic next. At this rate I've only had time to knock out one or two abilities per day, but hopefully I'll have a lot of free time next week to get as many done as possible.

I also finally fixed two minor bugs I found (one was basically a cursor effect that would never disappear and the other dealt with certain abilities killing equipped items). In the little time I've had to work on side projects, I feel like I've actually made quite a bit of progress with this map. My assumption has been and continues to be that once all the Data Editor stuff is done, it will all be smooth sailing as the rest of the map consists of spawn triggers, the occasional boss fight (though the bosses will be done in the Data Editor as well), and random/timed events when the enemy pushes to retake certain checkpoints.

As a side note, I didn't realize that I accidentally made the Infantry Commander's Active [R] ability his [W] ability. As it turns out, I'm missing more spells than I figured. Time to brainstorm!

So you just need one more spell ;O?

Suggestions
-Meat shield (You can use your imagination here ;O)
-Covering Fire (Shoots a shield of bullets around Commander)
-Smoke Grenade
-Decoy Grenade/ Decoy Hologram

Reproduce the "Defiler" and its spells from StarCraft I.

Except make it gray of course? Btw how do you know so much about the Galaxy Edit Payne?

Unfortunately I do already have a shield-like spell that acts similarly to Dark Swarm. Plague would be neat, but seems more like a spell rather than a practical ability. I also already had something in mind for a boss ability that is similar to Plague.

Remember that boss fights should be killed through pattern memorization

I disagree. Maybe for something like WoW, sure, but that's not really how it will work for this. I'm going to give the bosses a handful of abilities each and have them attempt to kill the players (with some help from triggers and whatnot, as well). They're more like the "bosses" in Diablo 2. The only "memorization" needed is remembering how the enemies' abilities work.

Also to clarify my earlier post, the abilities I need are basically an active ability for the Infantry Commander that boosts him in some way and a non-combat defensive spell for the Assault Commander.

So the Infantry Com's Passive is that his armor increases with each ability level, so I was thinking of maybe having his Active increase his armor by 400% or something. I'm not sure how useful that will be, though, since most other heroes have more useful boosts (the Mech repairs himself, the Assault lowers his attack speed by 50%, the Covert increases his damage by 100% for a short time, and the Psionic has an auto-cast lightning bolt that hits nearby enemies).

As for the Assault Com's ability, I basically need something to help him defensively get out of combat or protect himself. A smoke grenade or decoy may work, but the already Psionic has a similar ability.

Diablo type boss fighting might also work...

Clone and decoy grenade are similar, while smoke grenade is different =p

Yeah, the more I've been thinking about it, the more I like that idea. He can create a smoke cover and turn invisible as long as he's under it. I'll probably make it similar to Cloak in that he can't attack and such during that time. That should work.

So based on this, does this mean that you're not going to allow players to upgrade armor through conventional means, and rather, rely on the armor slots to increase armor? I'll have to agree with the smoke cover idea, it sounds much better than increase armor by 400%. The spell will be either be too good because it scales too well, or it will be too crappy in comparison to other abilities. 400% increased armor just sounds like it could be easily abused.
So I'm not sure if it was mentioned in the OP, so will attack and armor increases be solely based on weapon/armor slots and levels?
Accessories having long cooldown abilities sounds nice though, it allows you to add a special flavour to each individual hero and allows more variety in playstyles.
Also, will there be special NPCs on each side that may have one or two special abilities? Or opposing/allied heroes? (besides mini-bosses). You could have an opposing hero respawn every 60 seconds and he'd get stronger depending on how far you've progressed. I just love NPCs interaction while fighting.

Correct. I was considering allowing players to buy a piece of armor and be able to upgrade it, but then they could just keep upgrading it and new armor becomes irrelevant. The way I'm doing it instead is that players can purchase various types of armor that will fill that equip slot (and armor will be unique to the mercenary so people can't trade or accidentally take armor from one another). They start with basic armor, and as the game progresses they can sell old armor and purchase new ones. Some pieces of armor have special attributes on them as well, but perhaps at a lower amount of armor than a piece that would cost the same amount with no attributes. I am also considering the idea of special armor being dropped by the mini-bosses that can be used by any of the mercenaries. I haven't figured out how many armor items I am going to make total, but my assumption is that it will be maybe 30 pieces each (not including special dropped armor). To add to this, players can also purchase the armor addons, which basically just buff the armor and add more attributes to it (i.e. adding 5% armor, .25 movement speed, 50 health, and so on). Usually I'm the type who wants to keep it simple, but in this case it seems like more variety may be better, especially with such a long game.

Also, Weapons will work the exact same way as above. Without a weapon equipped, the mercenaries do no damage. Better weapons will increase damage, but also have other attributes they can raise or different damage effects they can utilize. Weapon addons will work the same way as the armor counterpart, increasing things like attack speed, range, and so on.

Right. Each mercenary will only have 2 accessory slots, so they'd have to really decide what bonus they want. Things like health regeneration accessories will have lower cooldowns, but also a charge counter so they aren't exactly infinite use. For the most part cooldowns will be long, though.

Yes and no. Aside from the mini-bosses there will be the occasional generic "super soldier" type troop of units that you'll come across, equipped with special abilities. Regular units will also have the ability to level, though, to make it a little tougher the longer they survive. At maximum level, the regular units will also have abilities based on the unit, though these will be rather mild in comparison (like Stim Packs and whatnot).

Don't have time to read every posts right now to make sure it have not been said, but the cinematic capabilities in starcraft 2 makes almost every RPG need a cinematic, or at least a small intro.

This intro would take the player in the action. For example, seeing the city army struggling to prepare defences before the invadors arrive. You should also add a more detailed story in the map, hack n slash truly is fun, but it gets boring after not too long if there is no story at all and all you are told by the game is : Destroy the gas station, destroy the broadcast station, etc.

There should be some sort of commander telling the player what to do, and for which reason.

For example : "You must destroy the gas station before going any further, this will prevent the citizen from fleaing the city, and will make them fear our forces."

This kind of instructions, maybe some small plot with a dark and/or mysterious character would make it fun.

I have all the cut-scenes planned.