hey, I'm new here and I need help making rpg spells, Temple Siege is a perfect example of what i need. can anyone help me out?

Spells are done by triggers, a typical example is that you got a Wapgate which is something like the "Spell-center" build zealot for spell 1, dragoon for spell 2...

The triggers often looks like this:

Condition: Current player brings at least 1 Zealot to Location X
Action: Preserve Trigger
Action: Remove 1 Zealots for Current Player at Location X
Action: Set Hitpoints for UNIT owned by Player X at Location Y to 100%
Action: Create 1 Carrier at Location Z for Player X [Z =a location which is always centerd on the hero of the player]
Action: Kill 1 Carrier for Player X

That trigger will effect that your "hero" (or "mage") will get 100% hitpoints as soon as he trained a zealot.
You can set mana costs by Gas (like in temple siege), just add a trigger which adds 1 gas for player X all Y seconds. Set those unit-prices to any Gas-Value you want.

Well, that's it.

Here is a list of often used actions as spells:
Create Unit (for example for Necromancer, or hallucinations)
Set Hitpoints (for heal spells or negative spells against enemys)
Set Energy (for getting full unit-mana or setting enemy's mana to 0 or whatever you want)
Move Unit (Moving a unit to a invalid location (not walkable) will make it stuck, so it cannot move any longer. Can cause lagg ingame (especially with air units, by air units you have to block the location, too)
Kill Unit (May be imbalanced, but maybe as a final spell against low NPCs)

If it's ideas you need, I'd be glad to share some.

Ok, i knew most of that, but i cant make the spells follow your hero, also i want to make it so you can cast a spell multiple times, but make it weak, for example, the light barrier off of temple siege spawns energy(aldaris) that fire on enemies and makes you invincable, if i were to make just 1 or 2 energy, but be able t amp tge power by using more mana to spawn a larger number of energies. when i try to make a spell create units, then kil them, they just sit there without dieing. i still need a lot of advice about rpg stuff, thanks for the advice.

You can always look into Temple Siege and look at the triggers.. Most of them aren't protected.

For what you want... you can use the units system described by Devourer... and have the Timer system used in Temple Siege, where almost every spell is under the same deathcount timer...

what you do is when you have 1 zealot.. move it to a location and do your spell with 1 or 2 energy.. when there's atleast 1 zealot in that location, add 1 deathcount of "unit."
When you build another zealot, move that zealot to the same location, set the deathcount of "unit" back to 0.. and create 1 or 2 energy more.
Have a max of 4 zealots in the location....
when the deathcount of "unit" reaches a certain time in which u want the spell to be removed, you'd just remove all energy and all zealots in that location.

Make sure you got conditions for other spells restricting that if there's a zealot in the location, and you build a dragoon, the dragoon doesn't get moved to that location until your zealot spell 1 is finished.... unless you want to combo spells together :S

ok, i've got a spell that spawns 3 arrow launchers (goliaths) for each time you build a zealot, when you first cast it, the spell removes the zealot, creates the launchers, then clears a switch. the switch, when cleared starts a 6-7 sec timer, when the timer runs out, the arrow launchers die, so if you try to cast too many it will only be there for a second because of the timer, i also have a spell that just spawns birds then kills them, but if you spawn the birds then cast the arrow launcher, the timer interrups the death action, creating a spell combo, in this case you have your launchers, and a bunch of birds fly off in all direcrions, letting you see for a long distance,

Get a location to follow a hero through a trigger like this:



The Move Location action = Center Location.

Oh, wow. i cant beleave i forgot something as simple as the preserve trigger action. thank you anyway

Hey, i have a problem, when i try to cast my spell i build two z-lots it doesn't do anything, i dont know why.

oh, i found it, i had it set to
condition-player x brings exactly one z-lot to location 1
ect, ect

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 1 2009, 4:59 am by JrOSTAD. Reason: fixed problem

don't forget the edit button, and to use hyper triggers.

ok but one problem, i dont even know what hyper tribgers are, let alone how to use them

hyper triggers basically make starcraft check for conditions to be met more often which makes all the triggers run faster. All you gotta do is make a few triggers with nothing but a whole bunch of wait(0)'s in them and a preserve trigger.

Trigger 1:

C: Current player commands 1 Zlot
C: Current player commands 1 "Hero unit that can cast this spell"

A: Remove 1 Zlot for current player
A: Create 1 Terran goliath at "Follow Location" for current player property = invincible
A: Display Text "Arrow Launcher"
A: Set Deaths for current player add 10 for Terran goliath
A: Preserve trigger

Trigger 2:

C: Current player has suffered at least 1 death of Terran goliath

A: Subtract 1 death for current player of Terran goliath
A: Preserve Trigger

Trigger 3:

C: Current player has suffered exactly 0 deaths of Terran goliath

A: Remove all Terran goliaths for current player
A: Create 4 Dark Archons for Computer player (Visual Effects)
A: Kill all Dark archons owned by Computer player (Visual Effects)
A: Preserve Trigger

This set up will make it so that Your hero will receive an additional Arrow launcher everytime he casts the spell. The duration of the spell will also increase with each cast. With hyper triggers, one cast will last for a little less than a second, letting the arrow launcher get 1-2 hits in.

Thank you very much, this will help me very much. btw my visual effect is a protoss observer, instead of an archon. what about other spells?
on another note, i have no clue how deathcounts work.

They just keep track of things. If you just copy what I wrote, you won't have to understand them.

Using systems you don't understand is one of the worst crimes a mapper can commit.
Sift through the wiki to get a better idea what death counters are. If you got questions left, shoot ahead.

I agree with nuderaider, i don't like using stuff i don't understand, but i will look into it and read up about it, thanks.

a problem has arisen, i want to make sure the spells,and pretty much everything else to, are balanced and fair. can you help me out with that too?

Sure we can. However this is no simple matter so you'll have to specify.
Generally speaking about balance alone could fill a whole forum and would still not perfectly fit to your map.

First of all you will need to have all of your spells set and ready to go.

Next, Play a game and see which spells dominate the battlefield.

Ask yourself why these spells are so powerful, and if other spells are about evenly useful.

Adjust unit damage, spell cost, duration of spells, hero hp, ect. Until a happy middle is reached.

This may take hundreds of games to finally figure out how to perfectly balance it, but this is the only way unless your brain
is some kind of mutant computer that can critically evaluate each and every spell just by looking at the triggers.

Ok, so i have to make all the spells im going to use, then test them against each other. ok forget spells, and heros, ect, ect for now, and lets talk infantry, i need ideas for for units, hp, atk strength, ect, and of course names.
i curently have a few, here are some
basic units-
marine - human bowman
firebat - human knight (sword)
ghost - human longbowman
medic - human cleric
vulture - human knight (horse)
goliath - human knight (crossbow)
tank(tank) - human catapult (packed)
tank(siege) - human catapult (unpacked)

zergling - orc grunt
hydralisk - orc archer
ultralisk - orc champian (elephent)

heros
goliath - arrow launcher (as mentioned erlier)
sarrah - umm cant remember, main hero
civ - lord sumthin or other

infested karrigen - orc champian (sword)

well thats the units, i also have a few elven units (protoss) and buildings