Graphic System - Provisory submission

[Daelin]

As there is no resource section for spells and systems, I'll post my graphic system here as I am in great need of constructive comments. It may also prove very useful to some mappers and spellmakers around here.

The Graphic System is a library that makes certain graphical aspects in Warcraft 3 much easier. It is compatible with other systems (such as the famous Caster System) but is also independent, using its own cache functions.

Version: 1.3
Last updated: March 25 - 2007

Features
- Easily create primitive and more advanced static shapes such as circles, lines, spirals and more.
- Flexibility: manipulate the parameters of the shapes created in many ways.
- Geometrical checks
- Dynamic effect birth & death: create static objects with a slight delay between units composing them and destroy them in the same manner.
- Timed effects.
- Dynamic and static destruction of the effects.

Promising features to come
- Dynamic effects: orbiting around units/a certain point, dynamic wheels
- Lightning pools: effects with lightnings
- More static effects (eg: stars)

History:

Version 1.0 - First version of the system with the basic static shapes (circle,arc,line,spiral,hypercycloid).
- Basic geometric checks.
Version 1.1 - Dynamic birth and death shapes included.
- Radius reduction function added for safety reasons.
Version 1.2 - GS_DestroyEffectDynamic() function added.
- Timed versions of both static and dynamic (fixed) shapes added.
Version 1.21 - Epicycloid shape added and fixed a small bug with hypocycloids.
Version 1.3 - Rose shape included
- Fixed major bug which caused imperfect (and most of the times incomplete) shapes.

Credits: Thanks to Vexorian for the dummy unit model.

~Daelin

 

[Herio-san]

This is a very usefull system, I already downloaded it from wc3c

 

[Mechanical Man]

You basically make those shapes with glow effect models as the points and make curves using trigonometric functions? Interesting

 

[Daelin]

Exactly Mechanical Man. Just by calling a function you can create such shapes. The number of parameters is a bit high because it allows you to manipulate the shape in very many ways.

~Daelin

 

[Wolverabid]

Bravo!

This Graphic System is sure to add plenty of eye candy to future spells developed by authors of all skill levels. Thanks for setting us up with this system.

[broke="+ rep!"]Daelin[/broke] 111

 

[wyrmlord]

I've made a system that made a limited number of effects with lightning effects. It really made only boxes, pyramids, regular polygons (circles included), and also a sphere. Feel free to take a look at it and/or use code from it here.

 

[Daelin]

I am aware of that system, seen it a while ago. And thanks for allowing me to borrow code, but I've learned my math with those roses. They were quite a pain in the ass. Nevertheless... I do not know how much I will extend this system to static shapes (I still have stars in plan, and maybe as a bonus, triquetra). I will soon start working at dynamic shapes (wheels, orbiters, line rotating around a point etc.) and yes, I also plan to extend it to lightnings. I will probably borrow from Vexorian that integer pool of his.

I may also make a linked list (simple or double... again, ain't sure) of integers in order to make the destruction of the shapes regular. Right now, it's a bit chaotic, as I always take the first unit in the group, and destroy it.

~Daelin

 

[Kixer]

Looks REALY good atm Dealin...
Hopefully we might get some good looking spells from it, probably mainly from the "Dynamic effects: orbiting around units/a certain point, dynamic wheels" function.
The effect destroying bit looks pretty sexy to me and any chance you could (once your done with the Dynamic effects) add use in real spells not just demo spells?