Efficient Single Target To AOE Triggers

The triggers can make a single target skill into an AOE skill.
It uses the same 10 dummy units for each spell to cast with so it's pretty effecient. No memory leaks AFAIK.

A possible improvement would be to use the same 10 units for all abilities, but you'd probably need more than 10 units to make it fluid then.

One little detail. The test abilities: Thunderbolt and entangle are based on the same ability, Blizzard, and that causes a bit of weird castings, when you have learned thunderbolt.

Enjoy, Kolibri. :ggani:

EDIT: Although the triggers use JASS they require NO knowledge of JASS to use.

Report all bugs to [email protected] , thanks. :)

You might want to make the triggers like, reliable too. the etangle one stops working after a while :P

I also have to wonder if you've seen this thread, because your method that involves creating lots of new triggers seems a bit ineffecient.

Finally I want to point out that some units, like Flying Sheep or footmen, can cast some spells instantly if they (the unit) have "Animation - cast point" set to 0. Abilities that can be cast instantly are ones like entangle, stormbolt etc, not chain lightning & friends or channeled spells. If the icon greys out when it's cast, it generally cannot be cast instantly.
Ofcourse the abilities still need 0 cooldown, and it helps a lot to move the hidden caster to the position of the new target unit between every cast.

I tried moving the units before they cast the abilities, but for some reason they then didn't cast any spells.

That always happen, but usually I can fix it with a little wait in between, but it didn't work this time, I even tried putting the trigger to sleep, but it didn't work. In any case it is unnecessary as long as you remember to set the range of the ability of 99999.

I'll try setting the "Animation - cast point" to 0.

Creating new triggers for each ability isn't necessary, but they all only run once and that is hardly resource consuming. I'll change it anyways hough, every little thing counts.

I didn't notice the trigers being flaky, though.

EDIT: I bet the reason entangle was flaky was that you had picked thunderbolt. Because they are based on the same base ability, it it acts up a bit weird (not because of my triggers :) )

EDIT EDIT: You were right there was a bug, if while the dummy units were casting the dummy spells the targets died, it didn't work.

I don't quite understand the process that allows some units to cast spells instantly while others cant, and what effect moving the unit has. But I do know what works.

Flying sheep and many other units, with their cast point set to 0, can cast spells instantly, but this only sometimes works if the casting unit is not moved to the position of the target unit. I think the moving thing has something to do with the unit turning to fire, or prehaps when very close no projectile at all is created.
Sorceress and some other units cannot cast spells instantly, this probably has something to do with animations altough changing the model does nothing. Generally speaking units that were never intended to cast spells make better hidden casters.

The 100% reliable way of casting spells instantly (without waits) is using the flying sheep and moving it to the target when casting. No changes to the unit are nessecary unless for some reason you decide not to hide the hidden caster. (and I cannot think of a good reason to not use hide unit, tho setting no model cant hurt)

New version, this one is better. :)
The bug is also fixed. ;)

EDIT: Deleted buggy map. Look at the first post or the one beolow this post.

Hey grater, what about wisps? That's what I've always used. They seem to work.. but would flying sheep be better?

Another bug fixed that caused it to cast the ability on one less unit than it should.