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I wanted to create a custom unit, based off the Nova Ghost Model. I followed this tutorial:

http://www.gamefront.com/how-to-create-a-starcraft-2-custom-unit/

While, more or less I do have my custom unit, there are some issues:
> Her portrait shows her feet. Seriously.
> No sounds at all.

I also made her a custom weapon, using an OP version of the marine's rifle effect. As expected she fires faster than usual, but the weapon does not produce the marine rifle sound I was looking for.

Any ideas guys? Oh and uhm, sorry for flooding the forums with threads like these. I'm really interested in the Editor but I really don't know how.

EDIT: Also, the transmission action does not show the unit's cinematic portrait if the units are not mine (Civilians, player 2). I tried setting the player of the Civilians to 1 (Yours/mine), but it did nothing. Clicking the unit however, will show the cinematic portrait. I haven't tested this on any other units that belong to player 2.

I don't really know much about the data editor and how to play with effects, weapons, etc.

01/28/2012 11:09 PMPosted by tFcZFalcone

but the weapon does not produce the marine rifle sound I was looking for.

What sound does it make?

An easier way to do things might just be to copy a marine and then change the model to Nova.

Also I've found its a lot easier sending transmitions using a model instead of a unit. Instead of
"send transmition to (all players) from (unit..... "
click on the '(' before unit and select "model transmission source". Most of the time I think it's easier using the model directly instead of dealing with a unit.

Also when sending transmissions you can't send both text AND sound at the same time (otherwise it will only show the text if sound is on mute). If you want to send a sound with a transmission you have to either play the sound or show the text seperately.

01/29/2012 04:16 AMPosted by Turtles

What sound does it make?

No sound. Nova just stands there making make-believe pew-pew sounds as she fires her rifle.

01/29/2012 04:16 AMPosted by Turtles

An easier way to do things might just be to copy a marine and then change the model to Nova.

Actually, I ran into some problems while copying already. Since I copied Nova 3 times (I delete each before making a new one), my new Nova now has some weird abilities, like Attack Copy 3, or Dominate Copy 3 or . It's not game breaking, but I'm pretty sure something's wrong.

Can't describe it, unfortunately. If you'd like to take a look at it though, perhaps I can upload it somewhere.

I'll try the transmission model thing. So, I can't play a recorded speech AND display text at the same time? Bummer.

I can help you with this, you have ran into problems that many run into when they first start using the data editor

I will outline how to make a custom nova unit, and why I do this, so that you may then tailor the end result to what you need, and hopefully learn how to make custom units

Step one

turn on the campaign dependancies, go to the data editor, find nova, right click her, and select the duplicate option.

This is where the first problem arises, there is no need to duplicate all the things in this menu, since the unit will adopt almost all of them itself, but what you want to duplicate, so you can customise nova's weapon/actor appearance etc, is to tick the box next to her weapon tab, to tick the box in the actors section on the actor named 'nova' (the main actor for the unit), you then duplicate her attack actor.

Next duplicate the weapon damage effect in the effects category, do not duplicate anything else.

Now, go through all the duplicates and rename each one, as well as give them an ID that is the same between them (so for everyone, perhaps have the ID custom Nova)

Step Two

if everything has the same ID, then everything will link properly, if you do not give them the same ID, things become a lot more annoying to deal with

anyway, go to the actors tab, and find the actor for your custom Nova, look for the the field
that says art:model and art:portrait (art placement and other fields aren't relevant right now)

set the art model to be the model named nova, now the unit will display as nova.

set the portrait to be nova's portrait model, now her portrait should display

now find the Sound: group sounds and Sound: sounds + fields

these fields control what the unit will say when performing an action, be it movement, and attack command, or a simple move command, in here will be a unit sound that does not exist (since your copy ID's will never match the games ID's) so go through those manually, and change each one to be that of the original nova, and now, your unit should talk like nova and make sounds based on the unit (if nova does not have a sound for a particular action then leave it blank)

Step Three

Now, assuming your ID's are the same, for all the duplicate items I told you to duplicate, move on to the weapons tab, and find the weapon your custom nova uses, now in here is the stats for period, period is the time between each shot from the weapon, if you want her to attack as fast as a marine, change that to the marine fire value.

now, with that out of the way, adjust the range and other options as you see fit and move on to the weapon effect (the effect that is activated upon the weapon firing and making contact)
it will be a damage effect, this is where you edit how much damage the weapon does, and how much it will do to each categotry of unit (for instance, +5 vs biological or something)

In here, you can also edit how much armour reduces the attack by, and if its a ranged/spell/melee kind of attack, among other options

End Result

Utilizing the simple method I have detailed, I created a perfect replica of Nova, with differences between the original set apart, since the duplicate uses specific duplicated assets alongside the global graphical ones to produce a duplicate nova that I can manipulate to do pretty much everything, without touching the original

here is a picture of said result

http://i.imgur.com/2yMO5.jpg

(note, that since I did not duplicate the abilities of Nova, other than her weapon's effects and the weapon itself, the copy retained the abilities in full, therefore, any changes to the stats of these abilities will affect the original, but it isn't hard to duplicate them as well if need be)

^ I don't really know what I'm doing in the data editor so I'm not in much of a position to give advice on it. One word of warning though:
If you want to play around with things in the data editor I recommend creating a small test map where you can fool around with custom units as much as you want without accidentaly messing up your map. Record what you did to make it work and then do it in the actual map. Otherwise you are left with all sorts of loose ends or potentially do something you don't know how to undo.

01/29/2012 05:53 AMPosted by tFcZFalcone

So, I can't play a recorded speech AND display text at the same time? Bummer.

There are 2 ways
the way I do it

Play transmission using <model> playing sound <no sound> with text <insert text here>
play soundlink <insert sound file here>


the recommended way

Play transmission using <model> playing sound <insert sound file here> with text <no text>
display text on screen <insert text here>


The second way is recomended because if you are able to create a custom portrait animation (no idea how) and want it to talk then the sound and animation will be synchronized properly. However I've never created custom animations and I've never had to display text to the screen so I don't know what function it is (although I imagine it would be very simple to find out how).

^ I don't really know what I'm doing in the data editor so I'm not in much of a position to give advice on it.

The data editor is kinda my thing, I never bothered to seriously learn the trigger editor, but I can make use of it for simple things that need to be done, and I am far from the most knowledgeable on the data editor, but I like creating custom units and spells, as well as effects and the like, you can really do a lot with the data editor.

Unfortunately, unlike the trigger editor, its very hard to put into words what to do, as well as explaining the reasoning behind the doing of said action.

Thanks for the replies guys. I'll get on it right away.

One word of warning though:
If you want to play around with things in the data editor I recommend creating a small test map where you can fool around with custom units as much as you want without accidentaly messing up your map.

This is something I should've done before making a map. Tsk tsk tsk.

01/29/2012 10:05 PMPosted by Thoth

I will outline how to make a custom nova unit, and why I do this, so that you may then tailor the end result to what you need, and hopefully learn how to make custom units

That's what I did... mostly, anyway. Duplicate a unit, duplicate a weapon, edit the duplicates. The thing is, sometimes I'm not satisfied with the dup, and delete it. And duplicate it again (sigh). That's probably where everything went down.

I ended up with this mess:

http://i.imgur.com/aepao.png

Here's an in-game shot; in this one, the transmission portrait of the talking unit (one of the Civs) is a blank, and as you can see, Nova's (Nina) portrait displays her boots.

http://i.imgur.com/9wRhX.jpg

I ended up with this mess:

http://i.imgur.com/aepao.png

those default abilities are the attack ability that you mistakenly duplicated, if you duplicate the attack ability it messes everything up, so you might wanna delete those >_>

Here's an in-game shot; in this one, the transmission portrait of the talking unit (one of the Civs) is a blank, and as you can see, Nova's (Nina) portrait displays her boots.

http://i.imgur.com/9wRhX.jpg

To fix the portrait error, you need to find the actor that you use for nova (the main actor) find the art: portrait, and change the portrait to nova's portrait, and it should work properly

01/31/2012 12:53 AMPosted by Thoth

those default abilities are the attack ability that you mistakenly duplicated, if you duplicate the attack ability it messes everything up, so you might wanna delete those >_>

01/31/2012 12:53 AMPosted by Thoth

To fix the portrait error, you need to find the actor that you use for nova (the main actor) find the art: portrait, and change the portrait to nova's portrait, and it should work properly

I'll just start over (O.o)

I'll take Turtles' advice and create a map solely for perfecting (or at least improving) my data editing skills. Your custom unit outline should help.

I just hope I can reset my map to factory fresh state (as in, before I messed it up).

01/31/2012 12:53 AMPosted by Thoth

To fix the portrait error, you need to find the actor that you use for nova (the main actor) find the art: portrait, and change the portrait to nova's portrait, and it should work properly

Like this? It was like that when I found it.

http://i.imgur.com/OHjMf.png

01/31/2012 01:22 AMPosted by tFcZFalcone

Like this? It was like that when I found it.

yes like that, although, that should mean that it would work, I have no idea how the portrait wound up like that, unless you changed the actor messages within the events tab, and even then I don't see how that would mess up the portrait...

01/31/2012 02:36 AMPosted by Thoth

yes like that, although, that should mean that it would work, I have no idea how the portrait wound up like that, unless you changed the actor messages within the events tab, and even then I don't see how that would mess up the portrait...

Well, the new one I made works fine. Thanks for the instructions.

01/31/2012 06:11 AMPosted by tFcZFalcone

yes like that, although, that should mean that it would work, I have no idea how the portrait wound up like that, unless you changed the actor messages within the events tab, and even then I don't see how that would mess up the portrait...

Well, the new one I made works fine. Thanks for the instructions.

lol, no problem, I am genuinely curious as to how you manipulated the portrait though @_@

if you ever need help with the data editor, just say so and I will try my best to help you x3, maybe I might even write up a tutorial or something for B.Net :3

01/31/2012 06:46 AMPosted by Thoth

I am genuinely curious as to how you manipulated the portrait though

It was a simple case of "Not knowing what the **** I was doing".

Seriously. Boots for a portrait. Maybe it defaults to that when it *can't* get a portrait? I messed it up enough times for that to be a possibility.

With my custom unit (based from Nova) out of the way, I'm now trying for other custom units as well as custom abilities. Giving a unit an already existing ability is actually pretty easy. It's creating new ones (even ones based from existing ones) that gives me headaches.

I tried coming up with a duplicate Zergling (to modify). The difference is I also need to duplicate the model since I'm going to increase the size of this new zergling. I followed your tutorial, with the addition of a 'duplicate model'. However, editing the duplicated model does not appear under the 'Models' section of the zergling (neither does the original). I'm still wondering how to fix this.

The model will not appear in the overview box like everything else does when duplicated, you have to find it in the models tab, then you just apply the model of the zergling once you have found it, increase the actor size, and it should be good to go.

01/31/2012 10:44 PMPosted by tFcZFalcone

I also need to duplicate the model since I'm going to increase the size of this new zergling.

If all you're doing is increasing the size of the model then you do not need to duplicate it. In the actor for your new zergling you can assign the model to be the regular zergling model. There is another field in the actors tab which is "model.scale" where you can change the scale of the zergling without editing the model to make it bigger, smaller, taller, fatter etc

02/01/2012 09:22 AMPosted by Turtles

There is another field in the actors tab which is "model.scale" where you can change the scale of the zergling without editing the model to make it bigger, smaller, taller, fatter etc

I didn't fine a Models - Scale, but I did find an Art: Scale, which pretty much did the same thing. Thanks dude.