Asking for Your Assitance

I am a member of an Clan that plays a very nicely created map, possibly one of the best on Warcraft. Its called EotA. EotA (Eve of the Apocalypse) inspired me to make my own map, yet I lack the neccisary triggering knowlage in order to develop a map. I dought I need much assistance on the game play: that I can deal with as I am quite fast at understanding such concepts. But lately, I have tried triggering spells and frankly: I dont get it, and I can't do it.

Thats why I am requisting someone to set up a tutorial on how to create simple trigger spells. I would like to learn how to create spells that: Cast Multiple Spells on a unit (i.e cast a dummyShadow Strike and a dummyCurse on an enemy), AoE spells (how to hit all units in an AoE with a spell such as Shadow Strike) and Channeling Spells (spells that might summon Balls of Venom that deal damage and poison units for a short time in an AoE). These are just GUIDANCE ideas of how to explain the tutorial using EXAMPLES. Yes I have looked at the site, and quite simply the tutorials do not explain in detail the spell knowlage required. They say "create this" "spawn that" well I dont know what that means. Tell me the trigger path, so I might learn something and possibly understand what your saying.

Any help, or guidance (through some sort of Tutorial) would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time, excuse my noobness. =)

Well its pretty hard to write a tutorial on how to make triggered spells in general, there are so many ways of doing it, some ways better than others, but it is easier for people to help make more specific spells.
There is however a common way people make triggered spells. And that is to create a dummy spell in Object Editor, and use triggers to deal the damage and make the sfx.
First thing you need to know, what type of spell it is (Passive, Aura, AOE, etc).
Once you have established this you then can figure out the event you need to have. Here is a list of the common events you would normally use (These events only apply to spells that are cast, not auras or passive abilities):

• Unit - A unit Begins channeling an ability

• Unit - A unit Begins casting an ability

• Unit - A unit Stops casting an ability

• Unit - A unit Starts the effect of an ability

• Unit - A unit Finishes casting an ability

Next you would most likely use conditions to specify more clearly what spell is being cast.

e.g.

• (Ability being cast) Equal to Animate Dead

And finally you would use actions to deal the damage and make the sfx and just about everything. This is probably the most complicated part of simple triggered spells.

If you wanted to make passive or aura abilities, it is alot harder.
Once you learn triggers abit better, you should start to learn JASS. JASS is probably the best way to make triggered spell. There are also utilities, such as Lord Vexorian's Caster System Map, that allow mappers to make more advanced spells without an extensive knowledge of JASS (but some knowledge is required).

There is a triggered spells tutorial. Which is here
And the second part here

Hope this gives you some idea of how to make triggered spells.

I suppose the most featured thing in all triggered spells are dummy casters. The easiest way to add effects to spells is by casting additional spells, and that's what dummy casters are used for.

A dummy caster is a unit without attack, shadow, pathing, with an invisible model and with the locust ability which makes it unselectable, untargetable and not appear on the minimap. That way, they appear to the player as if they didn't exist at all, and so any additional spells they cast seem to be a part of the effect of the original spell the hero cast. The actions that must be done with dummy casters are the following:
- unit - create unit (the dummy caster)
- unit - add ability (add the additional ability to the caster)
- unit - add expiration timer (a second or something similar, so the dummy caster is removed after it casts)
- unit - issue order (order the dummy caster to cast it's spell)

Of all the events, "starts the effect of an ability" is the most usefull one. It happens right after the casting cost of the spell is deducted from the casting unit's mana and right after cooldown is started. "begins casting an ability" is a bit less usefull, because the spell can still be interrupted after this event fires, either by stun or by another order issued to the caster. "finishes casting" and "stops casting" are usefull in channeling spells that have an effect at the end of the channel, the second event fires always when the unit stops casting the spell, while the first event only happens if the channeling of the spell is completed to the end. These last two events don't have the event response "target unit of ability being cast".

There is some confusion right now about how cast event responses work if there is a wait in the trigger. The topic can be found here. If you plan to have the triggered effects of a spell after a wait, the best way to do it would be to use a summoning spell as the base spell the unit casts, the event "unit spawns a summoned unit", and event reponses "summoning unit" and "summoned unit", as they don't seem to have problems.

Thank you very much Antinarf, your information was extremley helpful. Im starting to understand the basics off triggering, much appreicated. SpadeZ the information there also gave me some information on basic triggering. Both of you; thank you very much =D