Make a Line AOE ability - like Penetrator Round

[Exfyre]

I've been trying to make a cursor splat that resembles the one for the Penetrator Round in the campaign for several hours now, but I'm not getting anywhere. I am trying to make an air strike type ability where the user sets the direction of the air strike from the position of the caster, going in some direction outwards. I don't need to know how to do damage/effects/triggers, just the targeting UI.

Here's what my data editor looks like so far(large image):

http://db.tt/3jOQ4Py

 

[Exfyre]

bump

 

[DWZ]

Copy Penetrator Round? and then change whatever you want.

 

[Exfyre]

well, either I can't find Penetrator round, or it doesn't exist. I've even added campaign dependencies - no luck. Any idea where it might be found?

 

[DWZ]

Try opening the campaign map where it's used, then search for it there.

 

[Flare]

The ability your looking for is called Raynor Commando - Railgun Snipe. Instead of just checking for <ability name> under Abilities, find the unit which uses the ability, and trace the ability from there

As regards how the line effect is done, I haven't a clue - the Penetrator Round ability has a Search Area effect in place for the Effect - Cursor Effect field, but I don't know what exactly that would result in

 

[MasterOfRa]

Its simply a persistent effect, with 13 ticks, with 0 duration, and it has the periodic offset setup so that it searches a bunch of tiny circles in said line. I think its kinda disappointing that you have to do it that way, when someone for wc3 wrote a simpleish function that enums units in a line.

 

[Exfyre]

alright, thanks guys. That pretty much explains everything i had a question about. +rep

 

[Adovid]

Its simply a persistent effect, with 13 ticks, with 0 duration, and it has the periodic offset setup so that it searches a bunch of tiny circles in said line. I think its kinda disappointing that you have to do it that way, when someone for wc3 wrote a simpleish function that enums units in a line.

On the contrary, doing a search is how it is done, even for advanced things like physics collision-- but as opposed to scripting in JASS-- using effects and validators to do your searching is very fast and efficient. There are things that go into a low level search, such as sorting ahead of time and using efficient data structures that an engine will use under the hood which will make it much more efficient for large amounts of data. Just because it looks like a simple enumeration doesn't mean it is.

I have had up to 300 units all with their own search effect used for auras with validators checking for the right units and no performance hit to the game-- But if I tried to enumerate a small group of units with a trigger that had an if-then-else statement I noticed it would add too much of a performance hit to implement in my map.