EDIT:

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.

1) Possess: Dying HTs?

2) Transformation: Shield battery animations on dts/obs.

Wouldn't HTs get in the way? They take up room while they are dying.

And shield battery fails miserably because the battery animation lasts for like 1 frame before disappearing. It isn't like MC where the animation has a relatively long duration.

I've always liked larva deaths. The only problem is that you can't create larvae with triggers; they have to be preplaced or produced by hatcheries/lairs/hives.

Also you could stasis a lurker while it's burrowing, and then move that stasis effect around (It's pretty hard to see a burrowed lurker, especially on asphalt; but conditional effects wouldn't be of much use, eh?). http://www.staredit.net/?p=tutorials&tut=84

And maybe this link will spark a few ideas, although it looks fairly redundant in this case. http://www.staredit.net/topic/2403/

Creating/Killing a disruption web looks interesting, too.

How about dying air units? Scourges, Kakarus and the like.

Also you can ensnare, plague or mealstrom the unit during posess.
For the uninvincible visual use a medic casting restore.

But please don't ask me how to make the comp use then just in the right time...
There's a tutorial / wiki somewhere around here that tells you how to force the computer how to use certain spells.

@ roy

1) Larva deaths are bloody, which means a summon of sort. I want to keep it a theme. They do have the advantage of auto stacking though.
2) I'll see if I can get a stasised unburrowing lurker consistently. I doubt it, but if I can I'll totally use it.
3) I also mentioned the link you gave me in the very first line of my post.
4 I'm already using dweb as an actual ability. But, now that you mention it, I can force a computer to cast it, then give the dweb to a human player, move that, then kill it. It could work. Except that Dwebs can't be moved over terrain (they can be cast over it, just not moved over it) so it'll displace way too often. Moving a Corsair to cast it would look bad and interfere with the actual Dweb spell.

@ Nude

1) I have air units already. That means that the explosions will be off if an air unit is nearby. I want to avoid that if possible. Though, if it comes to it, I'll use them as they aren't nearly as bad as ground units. Most of the units are ground based, so a few displaced air units won't be that terrible I guess.
2) Ensnared/Plagued/Maeled units uncloak. I don't want that. And if you mean casting it on the unit itself well, Mael won't work as the units aren't organic and players already have ensnare/plague as usable spells, which will only cause confusion.
3) I've been looking into Restore, but it's difficult. Restoring the actual unit is out of the question as you'll lose control over it temporarily, which is a nono. Restoring another unit and moving it well...the end problem is that I don't know how to detect the Restore at the beginning of its animation.
- Restoring an ensnared unit and detect its movement change is inconsistent as there will be periods where the unit isn't ensnared and it's being recast (and the trigs will auto assume that restore happened, which it didn't).
- Restoring a blinded unit works, except vision is slow as hell in Starcraft and the move might come way too late towards the end of the animation. That's actually something I'm testing right now.
- I could try restoring a locked down mechanical unit, except again that's timed and I don't know of a single stackable mechanical unit.
- I was also wondering if I could detect the speed difference from a restored air unit that had Devourer acid spores on it, which would be the other thing I'm tesing. Again, the problem is that here's a slight period where it wont have the acid spores on it at the start, which the trigs might take to be restoration.
- Then there's restoring Irradiate, detecting if any unit nearby is getting killed. Yet again, the problem is the duration where Irradiate isn't being cast and the trigs incorrectly think Restore has been cast.
- Other than that, I'm at a loss as to how to detect the spell. Several of these have the possibility of storing the unit beforehand, timing it, and using it. As in, I can store multiple locked units, or multiple acid spored units, so on and so forth. Then make new ones by checking a timer if the original would run out. It COULD work, but it won't be fast at all.

Is it possible to cloak terran building sprites? If so, would a floating terran building be stackable and cast a shadow? If so, maybe that could be used as a sort of shadow effect.

Sorry, I have a bad habit of skimming over a lot of information.

You could create/kill a power-up unit constantly. It creates a firebat/scv explosion with no sound. When you place these, they ignore other ground units (as far as I know; source: Cannonball 2 *cough*advertising*cough*) and create at the location requested.

Also, I suggested lurkers because they have the longest burrowing time, making it a lot easier to time a stasis as they burrow. I did this for one of my maps (WoW Bound 2) and found it to time correctly every time. Time... time... time...

I wish you could do something with cloaked units... Centering cloaked beacons under a unit would look interesting.

@ Oyen

Not sure. I'm now leaning towards research into Restore for the Drag animation. We'll see though.

@ Roy

I think I found my arrow spell animations. Explosions that don't take up room and won't displace, yet look different from everything else I have. Sweet. Now I just gotta figure out a good drag animation. Thanks.

EDIT: Any others? Every powerup has the same animation, but I have two bow spells. I was hoping for something to differentiate it.

hallucinated powerup followed by a real one?

Ensnare animation.
Consume animation?

Perhaps you could combine some of your already used animations. For example, protoss sheild damage + mind control happening at same time might look neat.

An invisible siege tank shooting with 0 damage?

Idea for Posess: Create some allied cloaked wraiths above the hero, and an allied zerg underneath which is enemy to the wraiths. Now order those wraiths to move/attack onto the hero every 1-2 seconds. It will form a nice blurring effect and lasers shooting from a ring into the center looking like the hero is sucking power from somewhere while posessing.

@ NudeRaider

Hallucs are used twice already, once for real halluc deaths and the other for the scarab spell. Combining animations can be just as confusing.

I wouldn't know where to place the siege. They aren't stackable.

I'm using cloaked Mutas already so the distortion would get confusing. That and getting Wraith to shoot a burrowed unit is tough. They have too much range. P1-3 are humans. P4 and 5 are enemies. P8 is ally to you enemy to 4 and 5. P7 is my suicide script comp who is unallied only to P6. P6 is allied to all and is the target for P7 during spellcasting. That means that the burrowed unit would be owned by P6 and the Wraith p7. Since I have 3 other spells that have P7 attacking P6 AND how Wraith spread, there's a high chance of a burrowed unit nearby that the Wraith will target instead. I'm sticking with timed Recalls, enough so it's obvious but doesn't obstruct your vision.

@ Vi3t-X

Ensnare reveals cloaked units, the casting animation itself is difficult to control, and the player already has ensnare as a usable ability.

Consume...kills the unit so I'd be getting a death animation as well. If I could get the computer to consistently use it on a burrowed unit, it might have a place, but it's unlikely due to the added blood effect. I'm reserving blood for summons to avoid confusion.

@ Oyen

Then people could confuse the two animations together, thinking two spells are being used.

@ Everyone

Thanks for the help so far guys! Keep them coming. I just scrapped one of my bow spells (worked in my head but was terrible when tested) so I'm thinking of both a new spell and an accompanying animation atm.

I still need help on an uninvinc animation. Medic Restore seems to be the coolest, but the difficulty of getting it working is pretty high for something relatively insignificant. I analyzed possible spells with some people and it seems that Irrad (casts faster, needs no ai script) and Ensnare (faster to detect restore as uses movement detection) would be my best hopes to detect Restoration. Still, it's a lot of work AND it may not be consistent enough timing wise to show after the 1 second of invulnerability. Right now, I'm leaning towards just having a sound effect for it as I can't seem to get a usable animation that doesn't interfere with existing ones AND is accurate enough to show the 1 second delay.

I'm still looking at stasis, and it seems pretty impossible as well to time an unburrowing unit just right all the time.

Okay checked every unit now. Here are my ideas on what we haven't discussed yet:

what about a guardian hit?
2 ideas:
a) Create it under an arbiter and move it to the player let it shoot the player or a zerg underneath. Remove it. If it gets displaced a bit it wouldn't matter much as the impact is centered.
b) Let it shoot some stackable unit somewhere then time it that as soon as the unit got hit by the guard you move it to the player.
Idea a) could work for a ghost too... wouldn't need an arbiter. And a ghost is so small that it will barely get in the way if placed a bit away. You can use a grid for that, as it doesn't matter if it is at a exact place. A bit away so it doesn't get in the way is enough.

Oh and back to my air unit idea:
create an obs and cloaked scourge enemy to it. Order them both onto the player. After the scourge has finished its move he should suicide on the obs creating a blue/green explosion. Use 2 scourges for possibly green/green or at least red/green. Use a wraith for yellow/green.
Or just let a interceptor hover above the hero's head (not killing it).

Also a scanner sweep cast by a computer could visualize something. E.g. uninvincibility or posess

Hm... lurker spikes? If you could make them form a pentagram using a mobile grid that would really look cool for possess and would serve as a protection (depends on damage) the same time.

Are you using Matrix already?

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Nov 21 2008, 10:28 am by NudeRaider.

Timing an attack is the reason why I scrapped one of my bow spells. Units don't always attack at the same speed. Even though I can cloak and stack Guardians without Arbiters, I'd need the burrowed unit to die to detect it, and it's slow as hell.

I'm not sold on the Observer, but the Scourge idea is interesting. I can't stack new ones, but I think I can cloak them via disable enable enable so long as the players don't look at it. It leaves a shadow, but it's small enough I think. I can then get the green suicide animation by having it attack a cloaked stacked Zerg Queen. I like it. Since it isn't stacked though, its timing won't be that precise if an unstacked air is nearby (Irradiated Scourges or an air Pet), but I can use it. I wonder if it would look good on Drag. If so, I can use Feedback for something else. But Feedback looks way cooler. Hrmmm. Scourge will go in, I just gotta figure out where.

Interceptor...isn't worth it. Doesn't look interesting at all.

Scanner sweep requires an attack by a cloaked unit on a non hero unit at the precise location, which is slow, unreliable, and causes an additional sound before the sweep occurs.

Already using Lurker spikes and Matrix is available as an ability already. Lockdown isn't available, but it reveals all units except one in an extremely specific situation (as in, usable in a cut scene but not for during battle).

You still can move the cloaked guardian near the player and let it shoot once. You don't need to detect the hit. Just wait like 0,5s - should be enough that he always shoots.

You could also move like 4 interceptors and let them fly in a small circle - if you manage to get a nice mobile grid working...

Flocking cloaked air? i.e., create a bunch of observers, constant-order to location atop hero. They'd be visible, and only insignificantly affected by any other incidental air units, without obscuring the hero. Similarily, such a cluster of units might eliminate problems with animated shadows, which were your problem with doodad-stated units for "dragging".

@ NudeRaider

The problem is timing the Guardian attack. I'd need to move the unit right as the attack hit or the animation won't show up. I'm actually not sure that it will show up even if I time it right as attacks are different from spells (I don't think they stick to the unit like MC or Feedback does). Which isn't practical at all. I won't consistently get the animation.

If I move the Guardian to the player and have it attack, keep in mind that its range is crazy long. I already have up to 3 burrowed units owned by p6. How do I get the Guardian to attack the right one consistently? I already allowed for a small margin of error as only one spell keeps P6's target unit out for an extended period of time (the rest I "flash" P6's unit for a short duration). Using P6 for an animation at the heroes is really pushing it as it can interfere with existing spells. It isn't worth it.

I have non-stacked air which break aerial mobile grids, and grounded mobile grids screw up due to terrain and units. I'm also not going to Coordinate grid my entire map; I was intentionally staying away from complex systems like that for multiple reasons. Gridding really isn't an option for me.

That being said, thanks for the help NudeRaider. I'm still looking into how I can use Scourges. It doesn't really look like uninvincing or drag unfortunately. It looks more like an attack of sorts. Hrmm.

@ EzDay281

I already have cloaked Mutalisks, whose distortion looks just like a flock of Observers. I was thinking of using a shadow to differentiate it from cloaked Mutalisks.

2 things:
The guardian will attack the nearest unit being a threat to him. So hey will always fire on the burrowed hydralisk under him. This is reliable if I am not mistaken.

If you run out of players with specific alliances use P9-11 as targets. You still need one of P1-8 as attackers though.