Questions for the expert map makers...(lots)

I am starting a pretty big project. an action multiplayer rpg of about 2-4 players... Inspired by the Ys game engine... "an older action rpg pretty popular in japan, but we haven't seen an english Ys over here in a long time" It has a a decent fan based, older gamers will probably remeber those games.
But basicly that has inspired me to make an action rpg using the warcraft 3 engine and try to incorperate as many elements of an action rpg I can... A lot I know how to do all ready, But there is quite a few I don't and need help from people who know there way around the map editor...

1.) Is there a trigger for creating a doodad? NOT destrutable doodad... For example when a certain event is triggered I want it to create a fire trap doodad at a paticular region, play it's animation once, and then dissappear again... So either a trigger to create doodads or make a cinamatic doodad not fuction until an event triggers it's animation.
This would be an awesome way of doing some boss battles. Having a line of firetraps appear one after the other going in all directions and have a timed trigger to do damage while the doodad is activated or created...

2.) How can a make a region do damage to a unit... Like anyone who steps in the region takes 20 damage?

3.) Can I time damage to a cinamatic animation exactly? For traps for example. Say when a frost trap sprays from the wall, it will deal damage if you step into the region, but when the animation is off the region wont do any damage.

4.) Can I toggle movement to the directional keys or any other keys? Like holding down the up arrow will make your character travel up for as long as you hold it... Mouse clicking movement doesn't really work ina high paced action setting I find. I like having full control over the heroes movement... I know it was done in a unique way for death sheep of having the hero move left or right when he was issued the stop or hold command "s or h"
But can I utilize this with any other keys?

5.) My rpg will not take place in a single map, but more of a series of smaller maps. Like a village and it's outskirts are a single map... I know how to make a new map load up, I can easily make it "when a unit enters region start this map" and then I can save the previous map in cache so when you returned to it, all the quests and items and monsters that were finished will still be dead... But as most of the rpg's out right now, in the beginning you get to select a hero to play as... How do I make it so the next map remebers which hero was chosen by which player... And will automaticly load up that selected hero in each map with all the items and experience. I know how to make a cache file for a hero. But I don't know how to make it if say player 2 selected the Paladin hero that every map player 2 goes to the paladin will be loaded up.

6.) How do I make a computer controlled unit use 2 different attacks that target the same thing? I can give a unit two seperate attacks, but unless I make the second one like "target air" and the first "target ground or unit" I'll never see the second one...

I am wanting to do this pretty complex, lots of maps, lots of dungeons, lots of unique bosses. I am focusing it mainly on an action rpg, their will be story, but not as much story and dialogue as you'd expect from an rpg...

I am trying to make it a cross between secret of mana, warcraft 3 and Ys... The warcraft 3 engine and powerful map editor leave it open for a lot of what I need to do... There are just a few things I don't know how to do yet... Any help would be ver much appreciated and will have their name in the credits when all is done.

1) Either make a unit that looks like the doodad (I did this for my toaster defence map), or use a trigger to play the doodads death animation untill you need it (check ne campaign mission 6 at the scene near the skull for an example of this).

2) Pick all units in region (maybe owned by player or with condition) and do action, and damage the unit. If this does not make sense, check the undead mission (you can get these missions out of the .mpq with mpqviewer). If you want it more like a trap (instant damage, not continual), just do damage on entering the region. Check warchasers for an example of this.

3) For your example, you can just controll the doodad manualy with animation playing as in 1. For other things (like timing when a unit hits a certain point in whatever animation), I can't help you.

4) Make the unit sell units (like a merchant) and use those to trigger events. Dont give it the hero-select ability, neutral building abilities work fine without it as long as they belong to players. Check Firestorm (available in the downloads section here) for an example of this.

5) You can load units into a cache, check the campaign for details on how this works. To load everything's position (that is everything except player units), I would do something involving storing everything's point and unit type into an array. You might want to know that players will be seperated once they switch maps, I would recomend not switching and just using a bigger map size (256x256 is huge, and bigger is possible). If you need your map to be REALY big, make units to replace all the doodads you need with units, and shrink everything (them and the units that is) to half size.

6) It does not seem possible, but I think the first one is given priority, so if you made that one shorter range you might be able to give archers a weaker attack at short range or whatever.

You can create a special effect in a position using the fire trap doodad, and then 2 second later or whatever, destroy the (last created) special effect. Since special effects can be anything at all (destructable and non-destructable doodads included, I believe), this lets you have a bit more control over placement and destruction. Especially since you could do the same thing with *any* unit/building/doodad/effect.

For questions 1, 2 and 3, see the trigger thread. Scroll down about half way through the page to Mythemon's post and my reply. It demonstrates how to do fire traps.

AV

4.) Can you explain a bit better on this one? I don't really understand? I want to move my hero by simply holding down a certain key... Can you explain in a bit more detail how?

5.) I know how to create a unit cache easily, but I do not know how to make it so every players initial selected hero from the 8 heroes to choose from will be the one saved and loaded up in the next map...

Also ya I need a lot of maps. a 256x256 map would basicly be the size of my final dungeon

And one other problem. with creating a doodad from a special effect to do damage after it's created I can't make it dissappear if I want them to all happen at once...

For example in on of my boss fights, kel'thuzad yells "burn!" and creates 3 flame traps at the exact same time around the region to do damage. after they have been created I can't get rid of them, because the only way to destroy a special effect it "destroy last created special effect" sure that works if you want to create one after the other with about a second delay between them. But if you want one to be created before the previous ones animation is complete and destroy the previous animation when it is complete... Or create multiple ones at the same time you can only destroy the last one you triggered, the previous ones remained...
and if you destroy them to fast they wont play their animation... basicly I want to create 3 at the same time and then destroy all 3 at the sametime. I've tried issuing an action to play the death animation of all doodads of a firetrap type in the region 1 second after I created all three of them, but that didn't work...

1.) I want to create multiple at the same time and then destroy them at the sametime..

2.) I want to create one and then another a split second after it and repeat and repeat, kind of like a quick moving wave of fire and destroying the other ones only after there animation is played through

You can't really make it so holding down a key will move the unit. And in the examples mentioned, a certain building always has to be selected for movement to work, meaning you couldn't use spells or items for you hero, or even order it to attack. It would be best to just stick with the default control scheme.


Well, when the map ends you take each hero in play and save it to the cache. This isn't really going to work in a multiplayer map though.


You just create special effect variables, set the last created SFX to a variable and then destroy the SFX referencing the variable instead of "Last created SFX". Then you have another trigger which damages units in a region which you turn on when the SFX plays and off when the SFX is destroyed.

You can't use the cache on a MP map, it doesn't work.

Ya at this time I know you can't save multiplayer cache, but I was told that will be fixed in future updates... So I can atleats plan now...
But still even if it is a single player map, when you cross over to the next map, how will the cache remeber which of the 8 heroes you selected in the first map to automaticly load up that same hero again. I know I can save all 8 heroes to cache at the end of the map, but at the start of the next map how to I make it so the hero that you selected is the one that gets loaded up?

It's sort of a moot point until MP cache is implemented (if it ever is). Right now you could probably save player names to variables, save those in the cache as well and then load them up based on that.

There *is* a way to make a controll that can be held down, use the arrow keys through the camera controll. This is much harder than it seems to be and does not work in multiplayer though.

Like I said, using units to make special effects works well. If you dont need to worry about multiple sets of the effects (more than one of those attacks at once and at diferent starting times or the like), pick units of type or type in region works. Otherwise, just use variables.