Tutorial General - Basic Unit Duplication for model or minor modifications

[Cheekything]

I have made this brief tutorial on copying a unit for basic modifications to hopefully solve some issues people have been having with duplicating units and not getting them to work.

Start off by opening the Data editor.

You will need to have the first 4 of these buttons selected.

*note toggling the first button will be more useful for modifications later.

Step one find your unit

I will copy the marine, which is easily findable via the search box

Step two duplicate the unit

select the following 3 boxes only:

Unit, Actor, Model

*note if you want to edit the weapons and other things you may need to add more but for now I'm just using the unit as a shell.


The first thing you'll notice is that the file is completely copied and just renamed, which is good as you wont have to edit too much back to the original.

The second thing you'll notice is that the game will give you a white blob if you try to paste the unit (or in some cases like mine a black blob)

Step three rename the unit, you do this by double clicking the duplicated unit (it should be in green)

This will help for later on, however the name can always be changed.

Step four setting the model, you do this by right clicking on the model in the unit tree and going to View linked object.

Right I'm going to change the model to marine, however you should be more than able to change to any model you like.

*note the current model will not exist.

To change it find a model part that you want(you can use the search function to make this easier

Step five editing the actor.

Firstly check the Token (this is where the actor links to the unit)

You'll want to copy a few things from the marine actor to your copy if you want it to use the same voice or which ever unit you want it to sound like.

The one area you'll really want to check if anything is Events:

This area is responsible for a lot of the things your unit does and what it looks like while it does it.

You will need to double check all 3 (Send, Target and Terms) are linked to the correct unit/ model ID which in my case is Marine2.

All 3 will have the following two bits that most likely need to be changed if the correct model is not displaying.

A last note do not remove sound files, even if they have nothing in them.
i.e. (Marine_Birth (Unknown)
As they stop a default sound being played globally.

 

[punwisp]

Normally your only suppose to select actors, effects, and weapons when you duplicate a unit. And you should include how to get them trainable, people often can't get that to work right and end up having issues with them. A tutorial that shows how to get them to work and be trainable would be far more helpful then how to just edit them.

 

[Cheekything]

This is for building, units and other things, hence i didn't go into the weapons but alot of people have issues with the link between the unit, actor and model so this is for them.

This tutorial should be perfect for people who want to make a set of buildable or trainable dummy units/buildings and then to add in the complex parts later.

Weapons, abilities and other effects can a bit more complex in details but the link between them and the unit is much easier to do.

However I can easily create one on how to train units, any other basic ones tutorials missing?

 

[Tyman2007]

This is a pretty good tutorial Well done!

It's not a preferred method when learning. People should use the "Add Object" function until they've fully mastered it. Doesn't take long, but it's still something that needs mastered nonetheless. The duplicate function lacks some features in it and you can't do as much than with the "Add Object" function, but if you're looking to copy a unit exactly then it should work.

 

[Severon]

This is a pretty good tutorial Well done!

It's not a preferred method when learning. People should use the "Add Object" function until they've fully mastered it. Doesn't take long, but it's still something that needs mastered nonetheless. The duplicate function lacks some features in it and you can't do as much than with the "Add Object" function, but if you're looking to copy a unit exactly then it should work.

To be honest, I'm a little confused on why your saying you can't do as much with the duplicate function as the add object function. With the duplicate function you get the a copy of the unit you start with and from there you can add,delete,rename, ect to get the same affect as add object if you are getting a unit close to another unit or completely different and want to start with a template.