Multilevel Spellbook Error and Summons

Greetings.

I've been playing around with the Spell Book ability. As you probably know, when you open the Spell Book and cast a spell from it, it's supposed to cast the spell and close the book menu.
If, in the Ability Editor, you set Data - Shared Spell Cooldown field to True, you won't be able to open the Spell Book again until the cooldown of whatever spell you cast has elapsed. If you set it to False you will be able to open the Spell Book right away and cast a different spell.

For a one-level Spell Book ability, these things work pretty much fine. However, there are a handful of spells that don't properly close the book when they are cast. For example, since I was testing Summon spells today, I know that Healing Ward, Stasis Trap, and Sentry Ward don't close the Spell Book at all when cast.

However, for a multi-level Spell Book ability, it gets more sinister. If you take a Spell Book and fill it with the same Summon abilities at multiple levels, more of the abilities don't work properly at levels above 1.

Summon Abilities in a Spell Book at Level 1
Work:
Inferno
Spirit Wolf
Summon Water Elemental
Phoenix
Force of Nature
Carrion Beetles
Summon Lava Spawn
Summon Bear
Summon Hawk
Summon Quillboar
Raise Dead
Vengeance
Spirit of Vengeance

Don't work:
Healing Ward
Stasis Trap
Sentry Ward

Summon Abilities in a Spell Book at Level 2
Work:
Summon Bear
Summon Lava Spawn
Summon Quillboar
Summon Hawk
Serpent Ward
Summon Water Elemental
Carrion Beetles
Raise Dead

Don't work:
Inferno
Vengeance
Spirit of Vengeance
Phoenix
Force of Nature
Healing Ward
Stasis Trap
Sentry Ward

Incidentally, this is not limited to Summon-type spells. Many spells, for example single-target damage, have both functional and dysfunctional abilities among them.

I'm curious to hear if anyone has other experiences to add on to this. More importantly, though, I'm throwing this out there for you to see and remember later when you run into the same problems I had.

I have included my testmap so you can see the results for yourself. You will have to shuffle the spells in the Spell Book ability to test them all, as it only displays the first 11 at a time.

Nice work; don't we all hate Blizzard?

I forgot to test Dark Portal and Mechanical Sheep at any level.


It gets more crappy: I just tried to implement a similar Spell Book in a different map and found that Serpent Ward, Summon Water Elemental, and Summon Lava Spawn all did *not* work at any Spell Book level above 1st.

Explain that!


EDIT: Got it! I noticed that Raise Dead didn't work properly above Level 2 but worked fine at Levels 1 and 2. This led me to suspect that the Spell Book may take data from whatever level of the spell in it that the Spell Book is at. In other words, a level 2 Spell Book will cast from the Level 2 data of any spell in it! And it's true! Thus any spell that doesn't work right above level 1 can be made to work right by editing the values of the higher levels of that spell, even if you don't want to use it at those levels. Hoorah.

Level X spell book will cast level X firebolt !
Nice find.

Makes it harder to abuse spellbooks but at least we know how..

EDIT:
Btw I am adding/removing spellboks with triggers.
It makes it easier to do some stuff and I don't have to deal with problems like this.
Also I can have different icons for each spellbook.

how the hell can blizzard screw up shit like this? to me it doesnt realy sound like an easy thing to do, all the had to do is make a menu with spells on it, but no they cant do that! they must find some obscure way to code it/or wateva which makes it completely retarded...

Hmm...this could be very interesting...

Does that apply to abilities in the spellbook, or ones added via hax method? What if two spellbooks, different levels, have them haxed in?

Hmmm... this can be abused in some way shape or form. Good job +rep

I don't think so. I haven't tested all the fields but I think only some characteristics, like Cooldown, are taken from the corresponding level. For example, a 1-level summon ability still summoned the first-level summon creature even though the higher levels had no creature in that field at all.

Rofl. and for a second I assumed there was some consistency in blizzards way of thinking...

because this was all done for u, not so they could do the campaign. i hate it when ppl do what they need and leave it or don't make it fully customizable. a while ago my brother some how unlocked all possible values for ALL abilities in editor for all abilities but then when we quit editor we couldn't get it back. that sucked.

Sometimes people forget to realize the actual vastness of tools and stuff we have been given (all of them easy to use). It's kind of funny how very little people complained about the stuff you had to deal when making maps for Starcraft (that cursed 255 string limit was incredibly painful to deal with). People will never be happy with what they have.

[/rant]

dam right, but i still think they could have put in the couple of months and rounded off the editor with help from beta testers or something.

As long as we're not happy with what we have, it will keep improving :). So complain away for better editing tools!