NS map questions

Ok I know there are a few people out there that have attempted creating a Natural Selection(NS) map (half life mod) but so far I havent found a completed one.

I know most of the basics for making maps but there are just so many triggers and combinations that I just cant seem to figure out how to get some things to work (or maybe I can but I wanna see if someone can help me first).

1) -- working -- In NS there are things called turret factories(TF) and turrets can only be built in a certain radius around the TF. I havent figured out how im going to do this. I know I could go cheesy and make turrets only buildable on blight and make the TF have the blight ability but I dont want to do that since they are marines not undead infesting the ground. Maybe something can be altered to work off this I dont know. Also in NS when you upgrade to an Advanced Turret Factory it allows you to build siege turrets in the same radius. So that also will have to work in somehow.

2) -- working -- Another issue is there are things called Command Consoles(CC) that a marine can enter in order to issue orders, construct buildings, or place ammo, health, or weapons. Only one marines can be in the CC at one time and the team can vote to boot the Commander if hes noob and so on. I can proably just make an abilty on the chair so that a marine can go up to it, click on it, and be put in the CC chair. How can I make it so the entire team can use this building? I could make it passive but I think that would allow the enemy team to come up and click on it. Also how can I make it so that the commander can place the building to be constructed from the CC chair and the marines can build it for him. I thought of making an invisible builder for the commander but I was hoping for a better way.

3) -- 50% done -- I was also thinking of making the gold the ammo in the clip and the lumber the max ammo. This would be difficult though since there are different weapons and in NS each marine can carry 1 main weapon (SMG, HMG, Grenade Launcher, or Shotgun), a pistol, a knife, a welder, a mine, and a grenade. How I am going to do all this I dont know yet but any ideas would help me out a bunch. If anyone has played the map S1 marines ( I believe theres S2, S3, etc also) it has a nice system of having weapons and ammo in your inventory which would work I think. I am not sure how he did it though.


I have more questions but I dont want to flood it all at once. Theres alot of things in NS which I dont think can be converted to a wc3 map which will be ok if you guys cant find any solutions.

I know I seem like a noob because of all these questions (which I proably am I usually make pretty simple maps) but I will see this map done if I can get a little help since im basically self taught with everything I know.

Please post anything else you think would help with an NS map any help at all is GREAT. Thanks in advance ill come check soon to see what you think and post more things about the map.

1) Make the turret factory have an aura of some kind with a given radius, made to affect buildings. Then make a trigger so that if a turret finishes construction, but doesn't have the turret factory buff, kill it/remove it. I think that will work

2) That's a bit tougher. Not sure of the best way to do it.

3) S3 is an abbreviation for the author of the marine corps maps, SentryIII. Basically weapons and ammo are items. When you change weapons, it replaces your hero with a hero with the correct weapon/attack, be it a shotgun or machinegun or whatever. I think there's a variable that keeps track of your equipped weapon, so the game knows whether to reload or to equip a weapon when you click on it. If the charges of an item hit zero, i think it kicks in some kind of thing where everytime the unit with no ammo trys to attack, its ordered to stop. Then when you reload, it looks for compatible ammo, then takes as many charges as possible out of the ammo it finds and loads that into the weapon.

1) Good idea I just hope it wont take the gold of the builder if they do build outside the aura accidently. If it does I can proably have it refund them also. I think that should work.

2) Ya this one might not be possible =(

3) Sounds simple in words. I can proably do it if I cant find it pre written out there. I understand how its done now thanks!

Ok I got the turret factory working properly! Thanks for your help. I set the selection scale of the TF to the size of the auras distance so you know where you can and cannot place turrets.

I will get working on the guns and ammo and try to find a nice way to do it.

Some other questions:

4) In NS they have Jetpacks which basically let you fly around for a limited time but usually once you hit the ground you can take right off again usually avoiding most aliens except for the flying lerk, skulks with leap can sometimes get you, and fades using their blink ability do decent. I am not really sure how I will put this in because I dont want to make them so they can fly over walls since I want it to seem like a closed building. I was thinking of just giving them a 50% evade or more for a certain amount of time but that doesnt seem that great. Any ideas appreciated.

5) The game also has health and armor. Health is easy obviously but the armor will be difficult. Armor usually soaks up about 5-6 health for every armor in my expierience. For each upgrade I read its about 20 additional armor and 10% more health reduction. I was thinking of making the mana pool the armor somehow but if anyone knows and ideas ^_^ like usual I would love them. By the way I got most of my information here: http://faqs.ign.com//articles/544/544637p1.html if anyone wants to know.

I still need help with my second question and third is still open for ideas and stuff. Thanks again for help.

well, just a thought, possibly make it so you can turn on the jetpack to fly, but only up 1-floor steps (either use pathing blockers or pre/post position check to see if its attempted to go up 2-floors and move it back to its pre-position if it did


afaik from what i've played of NS, armor soaks up 30% of the damage per hit (unles they've changed it in a recent patch)

i don't know if you'd want the way i'd do the damaging since i'd do it completely trigger based as i find that the easiest to do damage calculations on
basically make damages to do 0, and then have a trigger on event unit takes damage, and do some calculations for its armor and how much damage it was suppose to take, set the new damage and use unit-damage unit of a dummy unit that can do damage to cause the real damage

i also have some triggers that allows you to only see forward (not camera-wise, but fog of war wise) although i dunno what kinda performance hit that would cause, nor if u want them or not

personally i'd make changes to the formula though, cause its hard to convert a first person game to a rts game everything-for-everything and still have the same fun-factor

I see what you mean I am thinking for the armor I could just add additional health to the unit and give them a few extra armor points to soak up some damage. I guess I cant have it perfect at least for now. That fog of war trigger would be a really nice addition I think to this kind of map. Especially since sneaking up on units is a big part of the game and its only suppose to be eyes view.

The jetpack will still take some thinking. I dont want to make it so that the enemy team cant hit them at all while flying because in NS you could always climb on walls or jump up and possibly hit them. I would like to make it seem like their flying though so maybe I could have them move up but still be ground units. Then just throw on an evasion of some sort =\.

I got a simple weapons system in now which should do ok for now I just need to put in the ammo for each gun and how all that will work.

I now have command console working very well. Basically I made the starting command console, resource tower, and building Neutral Passive. I set Neutral Passive to be enemy of the alien team and allied to the marines. There is an aura on the command console so that when the marine is close to it and uses his command ability he will enter the command console and all neutral passive units become his. When he leaves it goes back to neutral passive and he gets his marine back.

My weapons system is what im currently working on. Say your an LMG unit and you pick up a Shotgun, when you pick up the Shotgun on the ground it will turn you into a slow firing 80-170 damage marine (will add in low accuracy later) and it drops the LMG you were holding onto the ground visa versa just like NS. Proably not the best system but seems to be working and I still have to put in ammo and I need a system so when it changes the unit from lets say LMG to Shotgun it will put on the upgrades the commander has gotten so far onto the new marine.

Thats about it for now I think.

I was wondering how you can turn a ground unit into flying. Only thing I could find was changing its classification to flying which didnt do anything. Is it a trigger or an ability thing?