- Joined
- Jun 11, 2007
- Messages
- 43
Well, this is definitely a headache.
When I started editing with the editor, one of the first things I wanted to do was give the Marine a laser attack. I started out by just taking off his Gauss rifle and replacing it with the Battlecruiser's ground weapon.
It worked...except for the fact that the laser kept shooting from his feet.
That's when I learned about actors, and I started to understand a little about how it affected the appearance of things. I was just doing direct editing, so I didn't really use copies or duplicates for the moment. I just directly edited the Battlecruiser Ground Attack actor (which now applied to the Marine) and went to the Launch Attatchment Query section of the actor, where I found the values that determined where the lasers fired from the battlecruiser (as well as the pattern of turret selection).
I simply changed it to the same value that the Marine Attack uses and voila! The marine shoots lasers from his rifle.
Now I want to make a mod, and I wanted to make an entirely seperate laser weapon to give to the marine so that (if I chose to) I could have both the marine and the battlecruiser shooting laser weapons that came out of the correct barrels (I.e., the laser would come out of the marine's gun, while on the battlecruiser it'd come out of its ground weapon set, which has a different attatchment reference).
I started by duplicating the weapon entirely, which copied all of the related effects and such. Unfortunately, this didnt copy the actors that were related to the weapon. So I went to those actors and duplicated them as well, so that all of the models and sounds relating to it were duplicated. The actors I duplicated were as follows.
-Battlecruiser Ground Attack
-Battlecruiser Ground Attack Missile
I went to the "token" area of the data panel so that I could associate them with their respective effects. I set the ground attack actor to apply to the missile and damage effect copies while the attack missile actor was set to the weapon unit copy.
I tested the map and, lo and behold...the marine was still shooting from his feet.
I thought I might have missed something, and decided perhaps my problem was working from the top down. I should have duplicated the effects first, which would have duplicated the actors with them, and THEN duplicate the weapon. I reset things to default and tried it again.
And...he still shoots from his feet.
The oddest thing is, if I just give the marine the Battlecruiser weapon and change the original Battlecruiser Ground Attack actor so that it shoots from the Marine's rifle, it works perfectly.
Where did I go wrong? Did I miss something when I tried to set everything to default? Should I try it again from scratch? Is there some sort of link that wasn't copied right that just isn't registering?
I think this is what frustrates me the most about this editor. In the War3 editor, if you wanted to make a copy of a spell, it was -easy-. You could just hit the custom spell button, select the spell to copy as your template, and edit it from there. With the Galaxy Editor, you can still copy something based off of an existing template ability or weapon, but it doesnt do that for everything related to that ability. You can sortof achieve that effect using duplicate, but that only goes as far as duplicating so much, since you end up finding things it DIDN'T duplicate (such as duplicating a weapon, which duplicates its related effects, but doesn't duplicate the actors that concern said effects).
I shouldn't say War3's editor was perfect, though. If I remember correctly, certain fields like target effects and other effects worked -exactly- the same way as the problem I'm facing. Copying the Carrion Storm ability forced you to use the same impact effect unless you edited the original ability, which I think screwed up the Crushing Wave ability by not using its intended impact model...a model they -made- for the game. I was surprised that they didn't even fix that with the editor. How hard could it be to do that? If they're gonna hardcode that stuff, why even give fields to edit it?
Could this be a similar case? Am I doomed to settle for editing the original weapon rather than making a completely new one? That'd be fine for some mods, but then it just breaks the weapon for the Battlecruiser.
Sorry in advance for the long post. I try to give as much description as possible. >< I'm inserting the map as well. Maybe someone can tell me what I'm missing.
When I started editing with the editor, one of the first things I wanted to do was give the Marine a laser attack. I started out by just taking off his Gauss rifle and replacing it with the Battlecruiser's ground weapon.
It worked...except for the fact that the laser kept shooting from his feet.
That's when I learned about actors, and I started to understand a little about how it affected the appearance of things. I was just doing direct editing, so I didn't really use copies or duplicates for the moment. I just directly edited the Battlecruiser Ground Attack actor (which now applied to the Marine) and went to the Launch Attatchment Query section of the actor, where I found the values that determined where the lasers fired from the battlecruiser (as well as the pattern of turret selection).
I simply changed it to the same value that the Marine Attack uses and voila! The marine shoots lasers from his rifle.
Now I want to make a mod, and I wanted to make an entirely seperate laser weapon to give to the marine so that (if I chose to) I could have both the marine and the battlecruiser shooting laser weapons that came out of the correct barrels (I.e., the laser would come out of the marine's gun, while on the battlecruiser it'd come out of its ground weapon set, which has a different attatchment reference).
I started by duplicating the weapon entirely, which copied all of the related effects and such. Unfortunately, this didnt copy the actors that were related to the weapon. So I went to those actors and duplicated them as well, so that all of the models and sounds relating to it were duplicated. The actors I duplicated were as follows.
-Battlecruiser Ground Attack
-Battlecruiser Ground Attack Missile
I went to the "token" area of the data panel so that I could associate them with their respective effects. I set the ground attack actor to apply to the missile and damage effect copies while the attack missile actor was set to the weapon unit copy.
I tested the map and, lo and behold...the marine was still shooting from his feet.
I thought I might have missed something, and decided perhaps my problem was working from the top down. I should have duplicated the effects first, which would have duplicated the actors with them, and THEN duplicate the weapon. I reset things to default and tried it again.
And...he still shoots from his feet.
The oddest thing is, if I just give the marine the Battlecruiser weapon and change the original Battlecruiser Ground Attack actor so that it shoots from the Marine's rifle, it works perfectly.
Where did I go wrong? Did I miss something when I tried to set everything to default? Should I try it again from scratch? Is there some sort of link that wasn't copied right that just isn't registering?
I think this is what frustrates me the most about this editor. In the War3 editor, if you wanted to make a copy of a spell, it was -easy-. You could just hit the custom spell button, select the spell to copy as your template, and edit it from there. With the Galaxy Editor, you can still copy something based off of an existing template ability or weapon, but it doesnt do that for everything related to that ability. You can sortof achieve that effect using duplicate, but that only goes as far as duplicating so much, since you end up finding things it DIDN'T duplicate (such as duplicating a weapon, which duplicates its related effects, but doesn't duplicate the actors that concern said effects).
I shouldn't say War3's editor was perfect, though. If I remember correctly, certain fields like target effects and other effects worked -exactly- the same way as the problem I'm facing. Copying the Carrion Storm ability forced you to use the same impact effect unless you edited the original ability, which I think screwed up the Crushing Wave ability by not using its intended impact model...a model they -made- for the game. I was surprised that they didn't even fix that with the editor. How hard could it be to do that? If they're gonna hardcode that stuff, why even give fields to edit it?
Could this be a similar case? Am I doomed to settle for editing the original weapon rather than making a completely new one? That'd be fine for some mods, but then it just breaks the weapon for the Battlecruiser.
Sorry in advance for the long post. I try to give as much description as possible. >< I'm inserting the map as well. Maybe someone can tell me what I'm missing.