List will be updated as new questions come to mind.

Can an attack be unlocked by an upgrade? In other words, can a unit without an attack (i.e. Overlord) be granted one after an upgrade has been purchased? (possible w/ plugins)
Can I make a unit (i.e. an Overlord) periodically spawn other units (i.e. Zerglings)? Can this be triggered to happen only after an upgrade has been purchased?
Can I make a unit's attack projectiles (i.e. Lurker spines) slow the units they hit (using Ensnare, perhaps)? Can this be triggered to happen only after an upgrade has been purchased?
Can I make a unit that self-destructs (i.e. Scourge) EMP units around it before self-destructing (using iscripts, perhaps)? (possible w/ iscripts)
What do I have to do in order to iscript in a critical chance, or a chance of a second attack being used (using iscripts)? (possible w/ iscripts)

More to come.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 18 2013, 4:36 pm by Pr0nogo.

1) Yes, with a plugin. The easiest way is to create two versions of the unit, one with and one without the weapon, and swap the first type to the second type if its controller has the upgrade.
2) Do you have Dark Swarm/Disruption Web, or Spawn Broodlings, unused? If so, yes, with a minor plugin. Otherwise, I'll need to think about it.
3) The easiest way would be to give the unit two weapons, with the second weapon being a copy of Lurker Spines but with its effect set to Ensnare, and add attackwith 2 after attackwith 1 in iscript. If the unit already has two weapons, or if it's supposed to only attack land units, then it becomes trickier, and once again will take a plugin. (This is assuming that the unit in question uses a Lurker-style attack, as you implied. If its projectile just hits a single target, you can just useweapon Ensnare in the attack animation, or use a trivial plugin.)
4) This one's easy. In the attack animation, just useweapon EMP.
5) There's an opcode called randcondjmp, which jumps to a block if an x out of 256 chance is met.

While I'm here... I know I've kind of been a jerk to you in the past, and I'm sorry for that. I'm more than willing to help you out and stuff, and honestly I can't even remember why I was upset with you in the first place.

1) So it would be like triggering a normal unit to be removed and replaced by a hero unit, except with plugins instead of triggers?
2) Spawn Broodlings is Spawn Butterlings. Dark Swarm is Disinfectant. I can probably cannibalise Disruption Web if necessary, but let me know if there's a way around it.
3) I directly want the Lurker to slow ground units that get caught in its line of fire. Since Ensnare is no longer being used as a spell, can I make the weapon only affect specific kinds of units (e.g. flag it so it can't affect robotic units and flag all air units as robotic)?
4) Add that line of code before attackwith 1? I'll cross that one off the list.
5) Can you provide an example of that? Also, say I want a Zealot to randomly discharge AoE shock damage. I presume I'd be adding a second attack to the Zealot. If I flag it to attack ground units only, will it fire in place of the first ground attack (the standard Psi Blades)?

A new question: can I make Spawn Broodlings target terrain? (not possible)

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 18 2013, 4:35 pm by Pr0nogo.

1) Sort of. The difference is that the unit will not be a new unit, so its stats like HP and stuff will carry over, hotkeys won't be lost, etc.
2) There really isn't. Creating units directly is not a thing I have any idea how to do. Poke Heinermann if you really need it to not use Dweb.
3) I just realized how to do this! You'd set the Lurker's attack to apply Ensnare, and use a plugin to remove Ensnare from fliers and damage any non-flier affected by Ensnare.
4) Right. The line you want is "useweapon X", where X is the weapon ID for EMP, which I can't look up right now.
5) See codebox for an example. For the Zealot thing, well... No. I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but I can tell that it doesn't make sense. Now, given that Zealots are melee, what you could do instead is just useweapon the AoE damage, and use imgol or sprol for a special graphic if desired.
6) No, sadly.



Can't check that code, but I think it's right.

For the weapon one couldn't you set the button requirement to a tech being researched instead of has weapon?

It could still auto-attack though, and be able to be ordered to attack via right-click.

1) If you are short on unit IDs, you can use a plugin to directly order an attacking unit to stop if it does not fulfil your conditions.

2) Consider using Scanner Sweep. Although, I am unsure of how you will manage it without glitches. As I imagine it now, you would need to order your Overlord to Sweep at its own position, which would override its current order and/or order queue.

You COULD do this with triggers, probably. If you are making a mapmod, I am sure it is possible. (Although I'm not sure how you would move the locations to the correct positions. Memory access to that would make it fairly easy though.)

3) Just beware that the Ensnare effect would have to entirely be devoted to this purpose. You could probably use Corrosive Spores for this too (maybe).

4) Just a note that useweapon x plays the graphic associated with the weapon (ex. if you were to use Dragoon's bullet, it would make the blue sparkly effect on the attacked unit). Note also useweapon does not use a projectile. Its behaviour is a little more specific depending on weapon behaviours.

5) Making the Zealot randomly make an explosion as he attacks is largely identical to making it hit twice in one blow. Just use a useweapon x call instead (or a attackwith 2 if you want).

NOTE: Depending on how you implement it, if you decide to use attackwith 1 twice or useweapon x twice or an N number of times in a row, EACH CALL/WEAPON STRIKE IS AFFECTED BY ARMOUR AND UNIT SIZE. So if you use Gauss Rifle 10 times in a row, it will deal 60 damage to a 0 armour opponent, but against a 1 armour opponent it will deal 10 less damage.

Avoiding this damage reduction would be as simple as using a useweapon x where the weapon used has the correct, full value (then the critical strike damage is reduced only once). This may be a desirable balance consideration, though (for example, making a Sniper unit that only deals considerable damage against Small units, or similar).

Hope this helps.

GPTP can do that easily. Both it and FaRTy's EUDDB have a location table mapped out.

1) That's the desired effect.
2) Alright.
3) So in DatEdit, give it the Ensnare effect? I don't do coding, unfortunately.
4) I'll look it up myself. It's the number next to the weapon entry in DatEdit, correct?
5) I was trying to ask if I could make the Zealot randomly crit to do twenty or so damage in a medium-sized AoE. In my mod, Zealots aren't ranged units, but the AoE should come out of them to help defend against melee attackers. Would this require a second attack entry, or should I rely on useweapon instead?
6) Okay.


1) I have zero knowledge of how to make plugins, so *I* can't, but that isn't really what I want to do with the attack upgrade because I know there's no [easy?] way to send an error message.
2) I'm making a (balanced) melee-based total conversion. Maybe I'll make a campaign to go along with it, but that's not my focus right now.
3) I wouldn't want to use Ensnare in any other way for some other race, so that's fine. I don't really believe in the design philosophy of making redundant abilities or hard counters.
4) That's actually good for my purposes. Wouldn't want EMP missiles flying out of buttery Scourges, now would I?
5) So create a weapon for the iscript to call with useweapon? Makes sense.


The damage reduction actually sounds like something I'd want to keep, and I'm glad that that's the way the system works - otherwise my seventh question would be asking how to make it reduced every time, by different armour values. Hoo boy.

If I wanted to make a bunch of projectiles fan out in a circle (for the Zealot's critical), how would I go about doing that?
Can I make projectiles be the sources of damage, so that the longer a unit stands in a projectile's radius, the more damage it takes?

Heh, poke me if you need plugins. I've added you on Skype.

How large should the AoE be? If it's fairly small, I'd advise using useweapon and imgol/sprol. But if it's larger than ~32 pixels, you'll need another method, which I'll describe below. Note, though, that the method I'm about to describe requires adding a second weapon to the Zealot, which will make it able to target air units! To get around this, I'd remove the ground weapon and fire it by useweapon instead, and put this second weapon as the ground weapon. You'll have to disguise this weapon as Psi Blades for the UI, though.

Anyway, making projectiles fly out in a circle is pretty easy. The unit needs a weapon like the Lurker's spines, which is set to "Go To Max Range" or whatever. Do something like the following for the unit's attack animation:



The turncwise command turns the unit clockwise a given amount, with 32 being a full circle. turnccwise does the same thing but counter-clockwise. Weapons with Go To Max Range just fire from the unit in the direction it's facing until they reach, well, maximum range. And because there are no waits in the turn/attack section, it'll happen instantly, and no one will see the unit turning because it happens within a single frame.

Sure. Just set it up like the Lurker's weapon, but make it call domissiledmg every frame (and maybe slow down the projectile)?

Thanks for the code. The AoE should be something like the dimensions of an Archon (the unit, not its attack), and the projectiles should dish out the rest of the damage in a line. Judging by the amount of attackwith entries, I'm gonna have to reduce the damage to an acceptable amount.

domissiledmg should be called within the projectile's iscript and not the unit's, yes?

Would it be possible to replace Leg Enhancements with an upgrade that allowed the projectiles to deal more damage?

/e I don't use Skype, because it consumes massive amounts of CPU for no reason. I still have you on MSN, unless you removed me instead of just blocking me.

You can adjust the number of attackwith entries, heh. That being said, if it's just Archon-sized, I'd probably useweapon it instead; you get finer control over damage and stuff that way.

Right. I'm not sure what'll happen if you domissiledmg inside something that's not a missile, honestly, but it'll probably spawn an egg sprite or crash.

If you do it by useweapon, you could also useweapon a secondary weapon that does no damage but uses Leg Enhancements as its damage upgrade. If you do it by projectiles, you could swap the unit's ID to one with a more powerful weapon when Leg Enhancements is researched, via plugin.

EDIT: I haven't used MSN in forever, heh, but I still have it. You should be unblocked, if I did it right.

It should still spawn the projectiles. Unless...

In that case, I'll have one weapon do the damage and the other weapon spawn the projectiles (which do damage on their own).

Makes sense. That would actually fit the lulzy style of the TC, but things should still be functional, so I'll just go with what works.

My next question is about the bounce weapon type. How the hell do you make it work without the damages being uncontrollable? I tried giving a Dragoon the weapon type and it only damaged the last enemy that the projectile bounced. Is that something in the projectile's iscript that has to be changed? I remember editing it with the help of IskatuMesk, but then it just crashed.

I sent you an IM but you're listed as offline.

Re: AoE: Well, the problem with doing the additional damage via useweapon is that that'll only apply to the unit's primary target.

Re: Bounce: Yes, it's iscript. Look at the Glave Wurm's iscript and it'll be obvious. Basically though, there's some weird animation (Burrow, iirc), that's played upon bouncing, which you need to add.

AoE: I can't make the weapon deal splash damage that emanates from the unit itself (and not its target)?
Bounce: Interns...

1) I'm pretty gorram sure there's a way. I'll need to look it up.
2) I'd think that, at some point, Glave Wurm played a different graphic on its final bounce, or something, so they needed the first two bounces to use a different animation, and chose Burrow because a weapon would never need a Burrow animation otherwise.

Let me know what you find for AoE.
The Glave Wurm was originally Acid Splash, so yeah, that makes sense.

Is it possible to make a projectile bounce back and forth between only two targets until one of them is dead?

Useweapon x uses the behaviour of the weapon specified (the x is from the weapons.dat).

If the x weapon has splash damage, it will still deal splash damage. For example, tell a scourge to use a Nuke as it dies: this should work properly (but without the graphic - that would need a "sprol" command).

EDIT:


It MAY BE POSSIBLE with a plugin. IIRC, the weapon struct has a field for the number of bounces - one can continuously set the bounce to a number lower than the max. Thus, the weapon may bounce continuously. Possibly. I have not tested this out at all.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 18 2013, 7:41 pm by Sand Wraith.

But will the splash damage emanate from the attacking unit or the target of the weapon? Or will it depend on how I code it in iscript?

Please be aware I edited my previous post.

Splash should emanate depending on the behaviour of the weapon as specified in weapons.dat. You can set the weapon to "Appear on Attacker" or "Appear on Target Unit" (or something along those lines).