Modding Questions NEED EXPERTS

[SuiCidAl-KiSmEt]

First Question:SCV OF DOOM
I know someone here knows how to do it, I was playing Terran Doom, the SCVs Spin around like crazy and explodes. I tried doing that in ICE but the SCV doens't spine as fast and after it explodes, it leaves thier shadow, then crashes.

Secound Question: MOVING WRAITHS
I post a thread on how to make Wraiths shoot while they move, can someone leave instructions on how to make a turret, give it the the wraith, and make thier AI use it.

Third Question: OMG IM ON FIRE!
How can I edite spells? Well, I wan't the firebat to use their Flamthrower and shoot plague at the unit their attacking, meaning the plague doesn't do splash damage. I want the new plague attack only work on Bio units and do 80 damage.

Fourth Question: UNIT RANGES
How can I make a unit use two (2) ground attacks? Like, I wan't to use the firebat use Flamethrower for melee attacks and if the unit is far enough it uses Gemini Missiles.

FIFTH QUESTION: EARTHQUAKE!!!
I want to make the Goliath Jump, and when it lands it sets off a shockwave, on the spot they landed (I can use EMP Blast for the shockwave affect) and it kills (or do highdamage) to all the units around them.

SIXTH QUESTION: BOUNCE
How do I make a weapon bounce like crazy?

[DaMiNaToR]

1: Don't know.
2: Pretty easy if you know how to create a new turret....of course you could use one of the terran hero goliath or tank turrets. It involves ice, and in case you didn't know, attacking while moving was used in Terran Doom, so look to that to figure out the specifics.
3: You can't edit/create spells AT ALL unless you know ASM code, which is very complicated and hard to learn.
4: Easy. Give the unit two weapons, and set up their range min. and max. so that only one is firing at once, then look at the ghost iscript for terran doom to see how the ICE work is done.
5: Look at the Dragoon iscript from Doom Dragoon.
6: Use Arsenal III to make the weapon a bouncing weapon.

Hope this shit helped. :D

[BSTRhino]

Hi Toonami,

Gosh, you really do need an expert to help you. I should probably warn you – maybe I have already – but I don’t usually provide step-by-step tutorials for advanced effects, I only provide the general ideas that should give you enough to work from. I do this because I want everyone to get a chance to learn modding, not just remain modding newbies all their lives – advanced modders don’t follow step-by-step tutorials and so I believe that newbie modders need to get used to this to be able to reach a higher level of skill. So, if what you need is an expert to give you a step-by-step tutorial for your questions, then they’re beyond your skill level, so you should your modding skills some more and attempt to understand what the ideas I’m presenting you when you have more knowledge about modding.

I would have answered these yesterday but I was a bit exhausted with modding from trying to create the beginnings Zerg Doom. It’s a new day, so I have time to answer you now.

First, I have to say, if you’re going to get into advanced iscript editing, please use IceCC. There are religious arguments about how ICE is easier to use and how you can still do everything using ICE, but everyone agrees that when it comes to doing a complicated iscript, ICE restricts you. I strongly recommend you start using IceCC, and that’s for two reasons. First, it’s so much easier for me to explain things when we’re talking IceCC – most of the time doing the same thing in ICE would take a few more steps to explain. Second, as I said, ICE restricts you, and although you might not consciously notice it, the constraints it places on you limit your imagination.

I used ICE for two years before I knew IceCC existed, but when I found out about IceCC suddenly my iscripts became much more spectacular. The only thing that changed was a sudden increase in freedom to express my creativity. I would never have thought of a pulse cannon weapon for the Valkyrie, a psionic vortex for the Dark Templar or many other effects if I had been using ICE, because ICE puts your creativity in a much milder tune. So please just try it and get used to using it – the benefits will outweigh any costs. You can still use ICE to preview graphics and sounds – that’s what I do.

1. As you probably have guessed, the SCV in Terran Doom used a suicide weapon. Recognising that is important, because it tells you a lot about how to achieve the effect. When a unit uses a weapon that has the missile behaviour type “suicide” StarCraft makes the unit just vanish. That’s what you need to do to make your unit vanish – don’t use the “end” command or whatever the equivalent is with ICE.

If you look at the iscript for a suicide unit like the scourge, you will notice that after it has used its suicide weapon, it just goes into an endless loop of waiting. The endless loop of waiting will never actually execute, because the unit will have vanished by then, but for any suicide unit, you need to go into an endless loop of waiting at the end of the attack animation.

The way I usually do weapons like that is I have two weapons – one which actually does the damage, and a second suicide weapon that does no damage. The reason I do this is because generally I don’t trust most missile behaviours to do splash damage – although they might do. You can do it my way if you want, but the key is just to make your unit use a suicide weapon. That’s all it needs to do. You can add useweapon commands before the use of the suicide weapon if you like, but it’s not necessary.

If the SCV is not spinning as fast as you want it to, then increase the amount it turns each time. In other words, increase the x in the “turn x frames clockwise” command.

2. I tried to give you instructions in the other thread you posted. Like I said in that other thread, I’ve never given a new turret to a new unit, but I do have knowledge that might be helpful for everything else. If you’re looking to do advanced effects like an advanced modder, it’s important that you’re able to find out how to do things yourself from pieces of knowledge you find out in the wide world and combining them with your own experiences. If you keep practicing this you’ll be creating new effects in no time.

3. I was playing around with this yesterday while creating Zerg Doom. I was trying to make plague reduce its splash range. I didn’t manage to be able to get it to work, like I expected, the splash range is hard coded into the weapon explosion. I didn’t try changing the damage amount or type for the weapon though. You’ve tried editing the weapon haven’t you? If you’ve been unsuccessful I wouldn’t be surprised, it might not be possible.

4. I’m sure I’ve written a long post about how to do this somewhere… in fact I explained how to do it in ICE: http://www.staredit.net/index.php?showtopic=16742. Scroll down.

This is traditionally something that is about a hundred times faster to do in IceCC though. The basic idea is you use the same command the archon’s attack uses, which jumps to an offset when the target is within a certain range. Using that command you can make the unit choose between using two different attacks based on range.

5. You can set the vertical offset of a unit using shvertpos in IceCC. In ICE I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s something like “Shift vertical position by %1 pixels.” You’ll find the command used in the idle animation for the Wraith, Dropship, Battlecruiser or many other flying units. As you’ll come to find out soon enough, many of the commands in both ICE and IceCC are incorrectly named. Remember two things – one, the command sets, not shifts, the vertical offset of a unit; and two, positive numbers move your unit downwards.

6. It’s a good thing I got 0ssjskipp0 to post his thread in public: http://www.warboards.org/showthread.php?t=11072

--

So there are my answers to your questions. In answering your questions I probably have made assumptions so that answering this post would only take one hour of my time and not three. So, if something goes wrong, please explain what you did, don’t just go “I followed everything you said and it didn’t work” because the chances are one of my assumptions was wrong, and I can’t know that unless you tell me what you were trying to do.

[SuiCidAl-KiSmEt]

Thank You BSTRhino, I saved everything you tpyed up in a document. And ya, im rushing the modding thing, it's just I wan't to make a really cool mod so fast, I don't whant to wast time, summer vocation is ending soo quickly, but ya, your right, I can't call myself and expert modder yet. I really appreciate all the time you spent on this. I won't take advantage of this, the next mod I make will be awsome.

[JarquaFelmu]

...exhausted with modding from trying to create the beginnings Zerg Doom...A lot of people will be happy to hear that, I myself included:D.

Oh, maybe this might clairfy something,
I didn’t try changing the damage amount or type for the weapon though. You’ve tried editing the weapon haven’t you? If you’ve been unsuccessful I wouldn’t be surprised, it might not be possible.In my time with modding, I have found that some spells are incorrectly placed in the Arsenals (3/zero [even in Iscript]) You can edit them fine and you can change it for you unit, but their Uni.ID. is wrong, things like Optical Flare and a few others. What I have done to counter this is to copy and paste the data from those into the Unused Gauss Slots, and then with having those sure ID's you can edit the spells from there. Doing that I have been able to modify the Plague's damage and other such spells.


And ya, im rushing the modding thing, it's just I wan't to make a really cool mod so fast Take your time, enjoy the things you learn and marvel at how you grow as a modder, after all my mod took 3+ years of off and on work to complete, you'll probley be more happier if you don't rush everything and take the time to really bring your dreams to fruitation:D.