overhead text

OK, I got text floating above a paladin, of course, its just a workaround, and probably isn't worth it. but anyway, what I did was I just changed the blp for vampiric aura to an image i made that says "text floating overhead" and had a trigger that after 5 seconds into the game it creates a special effect with the model abilities\spells\undead\VampiricAura\VampiricAura.mdl (see attach pic)

worked fine cept for the animation of the aura, and the fact that the text is facing straight up, I proly might want it facing forward ala the TalkToMe (exclamation over the head) thing. So I did it with the invalidmodel mdx (changed that one's blp since that one isnt even used, and it doesnt really matter if the mdx is changed), and so i had a giant box floating over the head that says "Text floating overhead" on each side.

So I try editing the model's vertecies with daishiofdeath's editor (extract .obj, change verts so that its 0 in depth (x-axis) and then looked at model in the editor, looks fine. import the model, take a look, and no effect at all comes up over the head. I figure this might be becuz of daishi's editor somehow gettin rid of the mdl part or something (it messed it up in short), so I use Yobgul's file converter, convert the original Invalidmodel -> mdx, edit there to 0 in x, wala works fine...cept now the alpha channel isnt comin up (and I really dont kno what to change on there to make it work, perhaps one of you can tell me ^^, right now it just makes the whole thing transparent if I type in static Alpha 0, (copied right outta blademaster mdl) at the end of the materials...

Obviously its not the most efficient way to do it, but I can't really think of any other way. Post your thoughts. Doesn't really have to be text anyway that you have floating. I, myself, am planning to use it to make little emoticons appear over my characters in the rpg I'm making (ala Golden Sun for GBA). Should turn out ok, I hope...

Note: Oh and its hard to see the txt on the 2nd one proly cuz the skin for the invalid model is 64x64 while the auras are 256x256, and I just made the image size smaller for the 2nd one, didn remake it or nethin.

ok, got the transparency workin (just needed to make Filtermode to AddAlpha, but now everything is like at opacity-50% or somethin (see-through) as you can see by the emoticon i put in ^^)

boy this pally sure is happy ^^

still tho, its transparent, oh well, not that big a deal, but when tried with text its really hard to read (i suppose thats cuz my text was light green). Any ideas on how to keep the text from bein seethrough-transparent?)

I've been thinking about this one for awhile, since I've been dying to emulate the "miss" used by evasion and "damage numbers" used in the critical hit and mana burn. Both of these seem to be off limit to my limited mapmaking skills (or do you know how to get to them?), and at the moment, any change I make to access them would surely turn the map I'm making single player only.

My workaround has been to display numbers composed of special effects on the ground above a damaged unit to create the RPG-style damage numbers. This is, of course, tedious in the extreme to program. Also, I'm using the bloodlust effect, which is the smallest one I could find, but even that necesitates fairly large text. Luckily I only need digits and the word "miss." It's also a bit on the ugly side, but what can I do. Perhaps what we need is a group project to program all 36 digits and letters as a set of triggers that would then be freely available to everyone who wanted to use them. I've already got 1-3 done :) (Iit didn't take that long, but it's so boring I'm working on other parts of my map). Someone give me a heads up if they're interested.

Firstly, I think what you are doing with the overhead graphics is great, I hope you dont run into many more problems


Secondly, I found a relatively easy solution to the overhead numbers thing, but its semi-impossible (I still say its easy though :D ).

Add an ability to abilitydata.slk using critical strike as the base. Remove the extra levels and switch the unit type to unit. Set damage to 1x normal. Set the chance to 100%. Thats it, just give everything the ability (I guess you might need to make it invisible, which is one of those ability thingies I never looked up). Unfortunately, this file does not load into maps, and I can't help with editing it much becouse I am having a ton of problems finding a program to edit them with (seems like I have to re-install on the mac so I can use excel).