Advice on ability altering

[Lelling]

I'm working on a hero whose ultimate alters the next basic ability he casts to have an AoE effect instead of its regular (single-target) one, however, I'm deciding between two different ways of achieving this:

1.

All of the three basic abilities use triggers to check if the effect is regular or empowered (if boolean: ulticast=true). Once one of the abilities is cast, the boolean changes back to false.

Pros:

• Clear and simple triggers
• No ability-swapping hassle

Cons:

• The spell will still need a single target
• No AoE targeting texture

2.

When the ultimate is used, the abilities are actually swapped with respective empowered versions. When one of them is cast, they are swapped again with the regular versions.

Pros:

• AoE targeting texture
• Point targeting available
• More icon & tooltip options

Cons:

• Swapping abilities is a clumsy solution
• Cooldowns always reset
• Noticeable short fps drop on ability swap

Which would you use? Is there a third option that I am missing?
Thanks for the info ^^

 

[Kusanagi Kuro]

I think the first is better. Since swapping ability will cause reset cooldown, it may make ur hero overpowered and sometimes will cause bugs for ur map.

 

[Lelling]

I thought about that as well, but the abilities mostly use short cooldowns (one of them is Banish, which doesn't even have a cooldown), plus I could offset that by adding an additional 10 sec or so cooldown to the ulti - and adding the cooldown reset as feature of the ultimate, rather than an unintended side effect.

But yeah I'm concerned about bugs as well.

 

[darwin]

Third option but probably not what you want:

There is that upgrade ability that the Goblin Tinker has that allows you to make two versions of the same ability that can be upgraded when you have the tinker ability. This preserves cooldowns I believe, and allows you to make 2 versions. So when you use the ultimate, you just have to give the hero this ability. That's where it gets ugly, because you're giving the hero a 5th ability. Here are your options:

1. make the tinker's ability x = 1, y = 1, so it appears in the middle of your unit's card (above their 2nd ability).
2. make the tinker's ability x=4, y=3, so it doesn't appear on the card at all because the ultimate is already there.

Make your regular abilities remove the goblin tinker ability whenever you cast an ultimate version of the spell.

 

[Maker]

^That. The ability is called Engineering Upgrade.

 

[Lelling]

Ahh that's genius, thanks! I'll look into it immediately.

 

[Vinz]

Though I'd go for option 2 myself.. Because it would reset cooldowns and you could just add that as a feature. No other possible bugs unless every spell is non-MUI.

 

[defskull]

You do know that Enable/Disable ability for Player preserve the cooldown of spell ?
The downside of this method is that it works only 1 unit per player, having it more than 1 unit per player will mess up the work.

This action;

• Player - Disable Acid Bomb for Player 1 (Red)

Player - Enable/Disable Ability

So basically you will have a set of spells (one is normal and another one is altered).
Add both of the spells to the hero (via Object Editor) and at the start of the map (Map Initialization - or something), disable the altered ability.

By doing so, the ability is out of the unit's command card.

When the empowerment occurs, disable the normal ability and enable the altered ones.

But I think Engineering Upgrade is more efficient ?
I can't say for sure.