Alright, so im trying to have a marine that is able to change weapon settings, (machine gun to shot gun) so im trying to mod the siege tank and seige mode tank to be the same as marines.

-I have saved the marine grp as tank and stank.
-i have made icescripts the same as marine (different headers)
-I have made all settings in datedit same (Flingy, Unit, Images) well not exactly the same, i kept the images and graphics as their originals

I am running a map with afew units on it and the tank in tank mode, but it crashes right away, i dont see anything but black then a crash. (None of the other units crash)

Is their anything im missing? I can attach stuff if you guys need me too.

The tank turret and tank base have a weird connection and cross-communication, which if messed with in the wrong way will cause crashes. IskatuMesk told me once that if you change the timing of the transition, it'll crash. I haven't worked with Siege Mode before, so I'm not too clear on the finer details. Lord Agamemnon has. I'll ask him about it when I see him online.

In the meantime, start a test mod and edit one thing at a time with the siege tank to test the result. See if it'll work without the turret, see if you can simply hide the turret, etc. We want to isolate the cause of the crash. Once we know the reason, we can either solve it or do a creative workaround.

I would recommend attaching the data for us to inspect. It would be easier to look for problems (although I dont think there should be if you copied all of the marine's data directly onto the tank entries).

If you just edited the tank entries, I would look for possible problems like still having the turret (subunit or whatever). If you had a turret, and you removed the positioning files (in images.dat I believe, .lo? files), that would crash when it tries to place the turret. Also, the tank's turret positioning files dont work with the marine's grp.

EDIT: Reading Hercanic's post, Im beginning to think the problem is turret related too. The tank has lots of weird properties that other units dont have.

That is correct hercanic.

decompile an iscript for siege base, siege turret, tank base, and tank turret, the transition animation should be in the siege base's initial, and special state, and siege turret's initial, and special state.

in the initial, add up the wait time, i believe it should be around 40-45...

same should be for the special state, but it's reversed animation.

the waiting time is the total time for the siege tank to transform and u can mess around with it, but BE SURE that the total wait time adds up to the original.

same thing goes for the siege turret.

In my mod, i recreated the terran viking from sc2 using the tank (with valkyrie and goliath as tank mode and siege mode respectively)
so any questions u might have on this one, i can surely answer it

This is probably the only aspect on modding that I am pro at, I am proud, lol.

alright, ill make a test mod and try all that out. I wont really have a trasition graphic, but just a sound for switching weapon mode.
First off ill try to just get the tank alone to not crash without a turret... then ill look into sieging. Once i make the test mod with my files ill post it.

oh and modmaster, i like your signature pic did you ever finish that by the way?

I did release the mod (version 1.0b light edition). A few bugs were fixed, but due to the random crash and the avenger crash, the mod never realized its full potential.

sir i am sorry to inform u, tank, turret, and transition, these three things together are hard coded, if u remove turret, u won't have transition, or it will crash.

Keep the turrets.

Have the regular turret look like a rifle, and have the sieged turret look like a shotgun.

Lower their position by changing the .lo files.

Voila.

ugh, so is their any other way to make to units linked like the siege? where you can just switch between the two and they stay the same hp?

i could do the riffle thing and ive thought about it, but it would be too hard to make it move while walking and look good. And anyway, if you did that then you could be walking forward and the riffle could be pointing strait back.

This is just a rough, premature idea...

don't lurker have their own grp for when burrowed...??

maybe you can use lurker... and make it move while burrowed..

again, this is just a pre-mature temporary idea... Haven't really thought into it..

Dear Angel Lock:
Moving while burrowed is not feasible, as it would require custom coding to get a burrowed unit to move.


Dear RoryFenrir:
When something doesn't work -- remember, it doesn't matter how you do it, it just matters how it looks. Smoke and mirrors, my friend. Just give the turret a blank GRP, so it's still used from Starcraft's perspective, but the end-user doesn't see it.

HEY!!!

I just got an idea...

the whole problem is u don't know what to do with the turret, right?

just create a grp with a magenta dot with the same frame number as a tank turret

i did that with my carrier's interceptors, it looks awesome.

but this will surely solve ur problem of not knowing what to put on the turret grp -_^

the only thing is that the tank base doesnt turn towards what it is shooting at right?

Ill probably use a blank grp for the turret and not a magenta dot, seeing as that my models have no unit color

The tank base can turn towards what it is shooting at.

To quote Angle Lock, "check the "graphic turns" flag in the image dat for siege tank's siege base".

FTS, that doesn't work... his tank is trying to turn when ATTACKING, not when moving...

the real problem is to make tank turns like a goliath, where the base turns with the turret when attacking

and Rory, blank grp won't actually be blank, it would be a giant transparent red rectangle, try it on

Blank GRPs fail. Just uncheck "Is visible" in the turret's sprite entry. Maybe make the tank-marine's attack AI order 'Watch target" instead of "Stay in range". This should make the unit turn towards its target. But...what about making it show its attack animation?

okay, i am getting close. I got the walking and local sections for the tank so it acts like a marine, i made a blank (except one pixel) grp so it fits in.
--I also had to change the number of frames in the lol file to match the frames of the marine, it crashes if you dont.

Now my only problem is attacking, the tank now has attack sections, (same as rine) and i gave it gause riffle and i took away the turret's weapon (but it still has attack sections in icescript) and when i try to attack it just says unable. I want an attack animation, so what can i do?

I think the turret's attack needs to be enabled, because I think the game checks the subunit to see if it can attack. Try making the turret's weapon do no damage and see if the base attacks.

i tried having the turret having an attack, but it attacks with the turret's attack.

Im having problems getting the siged tank to move, i added move buttons, it has same script as tank, Aiactions and i checked the graphics turn flag.

Im also getting a crash when i unseige, i didnt get it before but its just in the testtank when i try to unseige. (The crash only happens with tanks that are placed as seiged, but when you seige and the unseige, it doesnt go back to regualr tank mode.)

I posted an exe with my grps and image,sprite,flingy,unit .dats (and icescript) My decompiled script is in the EXE, you should beable to find it, tank enteries are at bottom.

So i guess my problems are:
-Getting seige base to move
-Getting base to attack

Hmmm...Maybe theres some hardcoded restriction on making the tank turret attack. Maybe try making all of the turret's AI actions "Nothing" and removing the auto attack flag. I dont have the time to test this now.