changed for no mask and no problem

Very cool! Thanks for taking the time to put this together and share it. I'm excited to give this a try, music was always so tedious to work with with just the PlayWAV trigger.

READING ISCRIPT AND GRAPHIC RELATED INFO

Iscripts & Opcodes

Before we move onto more complicated things it's important to learn the basics of what iscript is and what it can do. Although we aren't able to edit iscripts, we can manipulate and overlap them which is the next best thing. The hierarchy of the things within the datedit portion of eud editor is important and each serves a specific purpose.



Units are linked to all of these tabs. We will mainly cover sprites and images. In terms of graphics (UI not included) the hierarchy is this:

1. Unit: All units are composed of weapons (if they have any), flingys, sprites, and images. Units are affected by triggers which make them preferred to work with but have the lowest count limits.
2. Weapon: Units can use weapons to creates sprites or flingys. The sprites/flingys created by weapons are usually considered bullets which have their behavior controlled by both weapons.dat and iscript.
3. Flingy: Flingys handle the movement portion of units. They can be either weapon/flingy controlled which is somewhat physics controlled movement or iscript which is fairly rigid.
4. Sprite: Sprites are the lowest form of graphics that can exist on the map by itself such as doodads and remains. They are not affected by triggers so we must rely entirely on iscripts to control their behavior.
5. Image: Images are ultimately what determine something will look like. They cannot exist by themselves and must have a parent sprite. Doodads and units are usually composed of several images such as the main graphic, shadow, and any overlays.

Iscripts are very important and I recommend you to learn and memorize them if you want to do any graphic related euds. Iscripts handle many things such as creating bullets, creating new sprites, movement behavior, etc. Iscripts are read from top to bottom and will go down the animation list unless there's an opcode that brings them to a different animation or there's an order that calls an animation.

#:                      Image ID. This is the number on the list within the image tab of datedit.
IsId:           	The iscript ID. 
Type:           	The type of iscript?
Init:           	The starting animation of the image. Usually this creates a shadow image and whatever else the image does when it's first created.
Death:          	The ending animation of the image. This will normally kill both the image and the sprite.
GndAttkInit:    	The beginning of the ground attack animation.
AirAttkInit:    	The beginning of the air attack animation. If a unit lacks this they may not have an air attack animation but this isn't always the case. Refer to the image tab in datedit.
GndAttkRpt:             The animation for repeated ground attacks.	
AirAttkRpt:     	The animation for repeated air attacks.
CastSpell:      	The casting animation.
GndAttkToIdle:  	After attacking ground the unit uses this animation. Sometimes used as an idle animation as well.
AirAttkToIdle:  	After attacking air the unit uses this animation.
Walking:        	The animation used when the unit moves.
WalkingToIdle:  	The animation used when the unit stops walking.
SpecialState1:  	The animation used for special animations. i.e. suicide attacks, building, birthing, etc.
SpecialState2:          The animation used for more special animations. Usually related to burrowing.
WarpIn:                 Warping in animation. All Protoss units have this animation although buildings are the only ones that use it.

This covers most of the animations. You'll notice things such as "local" aren't on this list. These are usually used for looping animations such as being idle or a ghost using a nuke laser. There's also animations related to buildings which I wont go over but you should have a good idea of how they work after reading this.

WIP

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Sep 11 2022, 4:51 am by Sie_Sayoka.

ANIMATION CALLING PT.2



Because we are able to call ANY animation set using the previously mentioned method we can do a number of interesting things.

One of them would be attacking with units that normally wouldn't be able to attack because of iscript limitations. We can even get ground/air only attacking units to attack everything. However, the basic rules of iscripts still apply meaning that the image must have an opcode that can apply damage be it either through a weapon or a spell.

• Ground only attacking units attacking air and vice versa
  
• Non-attacking units such as medics being able to attack
  
• Creation of additional images onto the sprite for image linking purposes
  
• Cosmetic effects such as warp-in animations for Protoss units
  
• Specific animations such as walking
  

IMAGE LINKING PT.2




Image linking is a somewhat advanced and confusing system involving adding specific images to a sprite. The additional images have their own respective iscripts which offer a number of benefits. There are, however, numerous limitations and downsides to this which you'll have to navigate to get a practical result.

In the example image there's a scout using a barrage attack, normally this would only be possible for the valkyrie as the barrage is hardcoded; in fact that's exactly what it is. The valkyrie is invisible and the scout image is added onto the sprite.



Each image will also increase the damage of a unit by 100%, given that the iscript of that image supports it. This means that more bullets/damage will be generated for each attack.

• Iscript exclusive animations such as Valkyrie or Firebat attacks
  
• Additional bullets/damage for each attacking image added
  
• Wide application of cosmetic effects such as offset images
  
• Use of subunits for non-LO* file images
  
• Elimination of rock sprites for non-primary images
  
• Iscript exclusive movement such as broodlings and scarabs
  

WIP

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 17 2023, 10:05 pm by Sie_Sayoka.