Tutorial General - Train Campaign Units in Melee Games (Beginner's)

Ioannes

Oh man, I shot Marvin in the face.
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Basic Tutorial: How to use campaign units in melee games.

Suppose you're playing a melee game and you ask yourself what would it be like if instead of ghosts you had spectres. Suppose you want to use the Odin or the War Pigs or simply a Firebat in your melee game with friends or AI. If you tried to tweak that in TFT, it was pretty straightforward.

WARCRAFT3: THE FROZEN THRONE

Find the building you want in the object editor.
worldedit1.png

And add or modify the units it trains.
worldedit2.png

And that was it.
worldedit3.png

It's more sophisticated in SC2.


STARCRAFT2:

In StarCraft2 it is all more complicated. You can't just do that to a regular melee map. Also, adding the unit is not as simple. First, you need to edit the unit's Train ability, and second, you need to update its command card with the changes.

1. Setup: enabling dependencies
2. Abilities: editing the Train ability of a building
3. Command cards: making the new trainable options visible in the game

1. Setup
First of all, if you try to edit an existing melee game, you will see that those units aren't there.
staredit01.png


That's because of the dependencies.

Whenever you make a new map, you pick them huge sets of units that will be used. Melee games use the Melee dependencies, while custom maps probably use the Campaign ones. You either start from scratch or Add Standard and then proceed with the abilities.
staredit1.png



The Odin is now here, waiting for us to enable it. To do so we first need to change the train ability of the Command Center.
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2. Modifying Train Ability(s)
Open the data editor and find the Abilities data type. Then, search for Command Center and find the Command Center - Train (Command Center) one.
staredit3.png


There is a list of abilities that the Terran Command Center has. You will notice that a lot of the unit functions from Wc3TFT are now abilities in themselves (e.g. Attack or Train). Which means that although hp and armor are still modified from the unit, the attacks and spells are modified through the abilities. The Train ability you see is the "Units Trained" field from the WorldEditor with some extras.

Now, we will change the units that are trained. For some reason, the list of units trained is not made clearly visible. But it's there. On the right, find the Ability - Info + field and double-click.
staredit4.png


When you do, you will see them. There's the location in the train list, the button (the icon) used and the specific unit that can be trained.
staredit5.png


So if we want the Command Center to train more units, we will need to add them from here. Double-click on the next line. This will open the window with all the various parameters you can adjust. For now we will look at the button, requirements, time and unit.

First you see the Info - Button - Default Button field. This selects the name of the button for building an Odin. Find the one called Build Odin and select it.
staredit6.png


Next, go to the section called Info - Button - Requirements. This field deals with the techtree requirements of the Odin. If it is empty, the Odin will be available from the start and if you manage to get the resources for it, you could try an Odin rush. However, I'll make it more feasible and make it necessary to have a Factory.
staredit7.png

You will see the field Requirement change as we pick the new requirement from the list. It is possible to have only 1 requirement, but you can always go to the "Requirement" Data Type section and make one of your own that includes all the different prerequisites that you need. If you choose to make your custom requirement, it will automatically appear in this list when you come back.

Next is the time it takes for the Command Center to build the Odin. In WorldEditor this was determined through the unit itself, on the unit page, but here it is through the train ability. Thus, different buildings may take different amounts of time to train an Odin. In our tutorial, the Odin will take 120 seconds to train.
staredit8.png


Finally, it's the Info - Unit field where the actual unit that will spawn is determined. To add Odin, click on the green "+X" button and select "Odin." Odin is now produced.
staredit9.png


To finish the changes, click OK. The Object Values screen now has an Odin in it, that takes 2 minutes to train and is only available if you have a Factory. Easy-peasy.
staredit10.png


I, for one, prefer the default green to the old default magenta for highlighting modified fields.
staredit11.png


With this, we are done modifying the ability. Now, the Command Center is capable of building Odins. Ouch. (To be precise, any structure that has the "Command Center - Train (Command Center)" ability will from now on be able to do that, so you can give the Sensor Towers this ability and they will be producing SCV's and Odins, too.)


3. Adjusting Command Cards
If you decide to try this out at this point, you will be disappointed. It all looks the same way as a normal melee game. In Wc3, if you changed the Units Trained field, you'd be seeing the new ones by now. In SC2, there is an additional step, which is about changing the command cards.
staredit12.jpg


The command card of any unit is just that - the rectangle where all the buttons are located. In Wc3 it updated automatically depending on what abilities you gave the unit. In SC2 the command card may not correspond to the abilities that a unit necessarily has. Once you have changed something, you have to update the command card manually. Steel already made a tutorial about modifying the command cards - LINK - but I'll go over it again.

Go to Data Type: Units and find Command Center. At the top you will see the "Ability - Command Card +" field.
staredit13.png


Double-clicking opens this window, where you add every new thing its own special button so that the command card is up-to-date.
staredit14.png


We need to add a button for the Odin. We will pick one of the white squares (white = empty) and put an Odin button. Click on one and then find the green "+X" next to the "Buttons" field.
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Click on the "+X" and a list with buttons will appear. Find the one that says "Build Odin" and click OK.
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Below that, there's four fields to fix so that the newly added button will work properly and build an Odin for us. These are the values you should give them.
NOTE: You should begin from "Command Type:" or you will be seeing blank fields for the other two.
staredit17.png


Once you're done, Terran players in your map will be able to make Odins from their main bases once they get a Factory.
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Before I finish, here's some things to bear in mind.

1. Because command cards are specific for every unit, you will find that once you upgrade your Command Center, the Build Odin button will be gone. That's because you need to go to the editor and update the command cards for Planetary Fortress and the Orbital Command as well. Here's how they normally look like - they need a new button for the Odin.
staredit19.png


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2. The Train abilities control the time to build/train/warp/morph something, but the minerals and gas it costs are found in the specific units' own pages. Look at that...
staredit21.png

Imba, isn't it?

3. Multiple Units.
Back to the Train ability, it is possible to train multiple units at once. To do so, remember the Info - Unit list on the bottom of that last screen. There you added units to the final product of the train ability. You can add more than one unit and if you do, using the train ability will produce that many Odins. Here's how to mutate into a couple of scourges as in the old Brood War:
staredit22.png

You can also add combinations of different types of units to the list, and spawn teams of units instead of single marines/firebats/marauders. All this allows for more work around the editor but also much, much greater control over things without having to worry about a single trigger.


training campaign units starcraft 2 ii star craft making campaign units building campaign units morphing campaign units morphing into campaign units warping campaign units warping heroes warping campaign heroes
 

Miz

Administrator
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This is a simply awesome tutorial. I can follow where you are going and understand perfectly and I don't even have the Starcraft 2 Editor. So Nice job Ioannes!

To some extent it is a lot more complex than the WE way of doing it, but looking at the other features you can also do, like change how the command cards are display so easily (moving their positions, etc.) which in WE was not so basic, is a nice improvement.

In any case, its a very nicely done tutorial, with good images. Which is great because we need more beginner tutorials. So much so I am just going to give you 25 reputation for doing such a nice job.

Keep it up :thup:
 

Gestalt Zero

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hi,i tried to do the same but with spectres at the barracks,but when i try to finish the final step,at "ability command" the parameter "train spectre" doesnt show up,could you please tell me why?
 

Siretu

Starcraft 2 Editor Moderator
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If the Ability Command field is empty when you're trying to add it to the command card, you probably forgot to add the button to the ability command.

Go to your train ability and open the "Ability: Info +". Double click the "Train XX" where your unit is located.

In the window that pops up, go to the first list (called "Info - Button - Default Button") and change it to your button.
 

Gestalt Zero

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hi,thanks for the reply,i did that and still doesnt show up,i seriously dont know where i am failing,it happens with every single unit i try to add
 

Dave312

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Are you adding the build odin command to the correct train ability?
 

Siretu

Starcraft 2 Editor Moderator
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In that case, I'm not really sure what's causing it. Would you be okay with uploading the map here so we can take a look at it?

If you don't want everyone to see it, you could think about sending a Private Message to me or Dave312. We're both experienced enough with the editor to fix the problem if we have the map(or at least I think so)
 

Gestalt Zero

New Member
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thanks but i solved it by saving,exiting the editor,re open it ,and the command is there,i have to use that method everytime i want to change something so its quite annoying,but it works at least,but anyway thanks for the assistance :)
 
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