Triggered Spell Tutorial!! Part 2 - The Triggered Spells

The Triggered Spells

OK, so we have our basics down right? It's now time to begin our training to be a Triggered Spell Creator! But first... More essentials...

The Essentials

Well, in order to MAKE a triggered spell, you need one thing. A dummy ability. What is a dummy ability?

A dummy ability is a Custom Ability that does nothing. Nada. Zip. It's only purpose is to do 3 things.

• Allow targets for your abilities.
• Give a nice Selection Circle for your abilities.
• Make your life easier

I mean, in reality, you don't NEED the dummy ability. There are work arounds... They do get pretty complex though... So no need to get you into bad habits aye?

So, to make a dummy ability, you need to go to the Object Editor. I am hoping you are pretty familar with it, for you will be using it more and more.

Follow Along 3

• Open up Object Editor
  
• Hit the Abilities Tab
  
• Make a New Custom Ability, or CTRL + SHIFT + N

We have a selection of 4 different types of abilities here.

• No Target [War Stomp, Thunder Clap...]
  
• Single Target [Storm Bolt, Frost Nova...]
  
• Area of Effect [Flame Strike, Silence...]
  
• Auto-Cast [Heal, Slow...]
  
• Ground-Target [Shockwave... Blink]

We want to do a very simple trigger spell. So base it off of the Hero Ability, War Stomp. Name it Follow Along Dummy 3.

• Remove all things that make the Ability unique. Damage, Buffs, Effects, Stun, Set any Duritations to .01, make the spell level 1 for now, AoE, Mana removal is OPTIONAL, but is a suggestion for testing
  
• Change the Icon to whatever you wish, it's located at the top
  
• Change the tooltips as you see fit. I normally don't do it until I'm satisfied with the spell. This is just to avoid pointless work if you don't like your ability.
  
• Give your new dummy spell, to a Hero of your choice and place the hero on the map.

Triggering It

Now, we have our dummy spell and our hero on the map. It's time to trigger.

Load up the Trigger Editor,Create a new trigger, and name it FA3Spell.

Our event needs to detect the Hero casting the ability. So go to Generic Unit Event...


There's our event. Our condition needs to say, well, this spell being cast has to be our dummy spell in order to run the trigger. So go to Conditions, and go to the Abilities Condition Section. Click it, put the following Data in.


The spell is our custom one, Follow Along Dummy 3.

Now for the actions. We want something simple, but actually serves a purpose.

It was good. The only thing you really forgot was that dummy spells are also good for mana. You should add that to the initial list rather then way down a tthe bottom. It's much easier to have the mana removed as part of the dummy spell then it is to do it through triggers. It was well put together. In fact the only major shortfall was... Grammar!!

Thank you Shimrra. LM is always complaining about some of my grammar, but this will stop him ;) . [/OFFTOPIC]


Anyway, well written (in the fact that it makes sense) and easy to understand. As a suggestion perhaps you could mention how to balance spells. You also might want to give a link to the old tutorial ("OK, so we have our basics down right", you never mentioned where they might learn these basics)... And, yeah, grammar is bad. I could make another grammar correction sheet practically the size of Shimrra's, without repeating any of his, but ...

Yeah. great continuation. I hope :\ that theres more coming, cause this is really helping. As for grammar, i do agree with shimrra and johnfn, but how bout the spelling in shimrra's quote?? undubitably? forget the grammar, check ur spelling! great help, linkmaster :D thanx!

indubitable: adj. Too evident to be doubted; unquestionable
Also:

• indubitability
• indubitableness
• indubitability
• indubitably

This is from the Webster's Universal Encyclopedic Dictionary.

I stand humbled and corrected. I have never heard undubitable. indubitable yes, but not undubitable. forgive my ignorance, i shall now look a bit harder before i open my mouth and embarass myself. ^_^

I intended to say indubitably. If you want to be that way...


It should be "King's" as you are showing possession. Second of all, you need to use full quotation marks. Also, you should use a period.

[gratitude]Anyway, thanks for pointing that out![/gratitude] (I know that's not a real function.)

well ok this seems nice but ,

We have a selection of 4 different types of abilities here.
No Target [War Stomp, Thunder Clap...]

Single Target [Storm Bolt, Frost Nova...]

Area of Effect [Flame Strike, Silence...]

Auto-Cast [Heal, Slow...]


what about line spells??? like the taurens one

Question: Ok after you done some triggered spell, is there a way to change their level via triggers? if so, I would like to know the answer, it would make my game much cooler. Thank you

Shockwave is a point targeted spell! Additionally I would prefer using "A unit starts the effect of an ability" instead of "A unit begins casting an ability". Reason: It starts the effect when the mana is removed and the cooldown activated. It begins when the unit begins the animation, which is before the mana is removed and the cooldowna ctivated so you can cheat with that, just activate it and after the hero starts animation order to move away and the trigger would still activate...

Is it just me or does this Tutorial seem to get cut off after you add the condition? Where is the actions part?

Heh, Sorry. I was doing other things. I have time now, I will start on it again.

I'd like to see a way (using world editor or UMSWE or WEU, preferably not slk data) to combine spells' power to heroes' stats. IE: A spell like Drunken Brawler that denotes .5x (times) Agility to dodge attacks and .75xStrength to critical strike. I've seen this in the EOTA maps, just wondering how it's done.

DOING OTHER THINGS??? wat could be more important than WARCRAFT?
lol jk but when u set out to do something u should finish it