[General] Is Locust Swarm still hardcoded to add alternate animation?

[Death Adder]

I've got this unit that has locust swarm, and its model also has alternate animations (morph), so whenever it uses Locust Swarm it transforms.

Now this isn't that big of a deal on its own, since I can just remove the "alternate" tag with triggers whenever Locust Swarm is used.

But the issue is that I actually want to use this units alternate form as well, and when Locust Swarm is over it removes the alternate tag even if my unit is morphed.


Now comes the real kicker, Locust Swarm doesn't actually end on it's duration time, but rather when the locusts return to the caster and/or they die, and one thing I noticed is that if you teleport too far away from them they all die and Locust Swarm ends immediately.

So I don't know when Locust Swarm will end, and there doesn't appear to be any event that catches it.



So what I want to know is if there's some way to remove alternate animation tag from Locust Swarm, or if maybe I could make alternate permanent with a trigger so Locust Swarm can't remove it.

I could use a periodic event to constantly add the alternate tag until the transformation is over, but then there could be times when the unit switches back and forth very quickly which I would like to avoid.



I also tried using the event Unit - A unit Spawns a summoned unit but the locusts don't seem to count as summoned units, which is a shame, because this way at least I would have a link connecting the caster to the locusts.



My last resort has been to use the a unit enters a region event to detect when the locusts spawn, but the issue is that there's time between each spawn, so making this MUI is looking to be pretty difficult.

If two or more units use the ability at the same time it would be difficult to detect which locusts belong to which caster, but since the interval is supposed to be the same I can at least give it a shot if there's no better solution.

 

[Boar]

Why not just have a dummy unit cast locust swarm instead?

 

[Death Adder]

Why not just have a dummy unit cast locust swarm instead?

Then the lifestealing from locust swarm wouldn't work


Well, I guess I could intentionally damage the dummy unit and then detect when it gets healed and do the same for the caster...

 

[Hermit]

How about renaming the model's animations from "Alternate" to something else (e.g. Upgrade, Defend, Lumber)?

 

[Death Adder]

How about renaming the model's animations from "Alternate" to something else (e.g. Upgrade, Defend, Lumber)?

But then Metamorphosis, Bear Form, etc. won't work as well, right?

 

[datsatthune]

Same problem, does anyone here have answer?

 

[Elprede]

Perhaps, you could make use of these two orders id for some of your problems.

852558 - target order, points to the hero, locust will "return" to the target
852557 - immediate order, for locust to start roaming
They only work on unit with Aloc ability.

 

[datsatthune]

After a bit of research I found a way.
Create a trigger, check when that type of locust unit dies, we will add (or remove depending on model) alternate tag for that Hero.

 

[Death Adder]

852558 - target order, points to the hero, locust will "return" to the target

This could be very useful, my main issue is that there's no direct link between the locusts and the caster.

After a bit of research I found a way.
Create a trigger, check when that type of locust unit dies, we will add (or remove depending on model) alternate tag for that Hero.

That's been my plan, but did you get it to work?

Because if I want it to be MUI I need to be able to tell which hero those locusts belong to, and the locusts have an interval between each spawn, so if two units use locust swarm at the same time, how do you know which locust belongs to which caster?

 

[datsatthune]

That's been my plan, but did you get it to work?

Because if I want it to be MUI I need to be able to tell which hero those locusts belong to, and the locusts have an interval between each spawn, so if two units use locust swarm at the same time, how do you know which locust belongs to which caster?

In my map, 1 player have only 1 hero, so it very easy to make it MUI.