creating MordorFellbeast by OCL

I'm trying to make a toggle between my on-foot Nazgul and fying Nazgul. I searched a lot and read a lot of topics in MEMW, and I found that the only way to make a toggle between on-foot Nazgul and flying Nazgul (or on-foot WitchKing and flying one), is to kill on-foot one once and create flying one by OCL.

So I modified ocl.ini and evilfactionunits.ini to spawn MordorFellBeast when my on-foot Nazgul dies, but MordorFellBeast doesn't get spawned. I managed to spawn other units such as normal units and heros by OCL so I'm sure that how it's written is correct. For some reason it seems that flying objects don't get spawed by OCL. Could anyone help me out?

Thanks.

Vapula

try to use the flying eagle OCL maybe. i really dont know. just an suggestion

I got this to work using a modified version of the mine code, It destroys the nazgul, and creates the fellbeast. But... It only works one way, you can't change it back.

Weapon FellBeastWeapon  ; BALANCE Mine Weapon
	AttackRange    = 15.0
	MeleeWeapon    = No
	DelayBetweenShots 	 = 3000 	 ; time between shots, msec
	PreAttackDelay 	 = 1466 	 ; 433 is natural time of the stabbing animation.
	PreAttackType 	 = PER_SHOT 	 ; Do the delay each time we attack a new target
	FiringDuration 	 = 733    ; min 600 for anim
	AcceptableAimDelta  = 15    ; Give it a little leeway
	NoVictimNeeded 	 = Yes    ; Need no target
	OverrideVoiceAttackSound	= ExplosiveMineVoiceDeploy;Play Special "leave it there voice"

	SpawnAndFadeNugget	
  ObjectTargetFilter = ANY +STRUCTURE +INFANTRY +CAVALRY +MONSTER -ROCK_VENDOR; And funny thing, even though this has Position in the name, nothing actually makes it be Position based.  So when the object one fails on a rock, this one get picked.  So filter goes here too.
  SpawnedObjectName = MordorFellBeast
  SpawnOffset = X:8 Y:1 Z:0
	End
End

you need to add it as a weapon. Add this code to your commandbutton.ini, changing the weaponslot to the one you used.

CommandButton Command_MountFellBeast
  Command    = FIRE_WEAPON
 WeaponSlot 	 = SECONDARY
;  Options    = NEED_TARGET_POS; CONTEXTMODE_COMMAND
  TextLabel    = CONTROLBAR:DeployMine
  ButtonImage 	 = SBEvil_Plus1Nazgul
 ;CursorName 	 = AttackObj
 ;InvalidCursorName  = GenericInvalid
  ButtonBorderType  = ACTION
  DescriptLabel 	 = CONTROLBAR:ToolTipDeployMine
  InPalantir 	 = Yes

End

hope that helps

if i make witch king on foot bigger by the scale will he be larger at the fellbeast as well? i'am to lazy to check it out by my self;---)

no. He'll still be the same size on the fell beast. Unless you resize the MordorFellBeast object too.

thx pabtyf, I will try your way!

Edit: I think I managed to make a toggle between on-foot Nazgul and flying Nazgul. He can transform both ways (from flying to onfoot, and from onfoot to flying), and the number of buildable Nazguls can be held constant. woot I did it.

Edited by Vapula!, 31 March 2005 - 03:46 AM.

will you share this with me?

Than it's time to write us a tutorial on how you did it so we can add you to history.

i really hope he'll write a tutorial, that'd be

I'll probablly release a manual install version of my Nazgul mod with a toggle feature in a couple of days (once I sort out all the small coding problems), so you will be able to have a look at my coding.

However it isn't perfect yet. The biggest and only problem is since Nazgul/WitchKing spawns as a completely new unit, each time he toggles Fellbeast, his health recovers full. One can cheat by mounting a fellbeast, get full health and fly away when his Nazgul is about to die! I'm trying to add StartPaused = Yes with mouting fellbeast ability (so it cannot be toggled like every second), and unpause it by some sort of events (timer would be the best but I don't know how to unpause a certain upgrade feature by timer).

To #8
I received a messege from you but when I opened it says follows :(
The error returned was:
You are not allowed to use the messenger feature on this board

EDIT: nm, I managed to read it, and thanks for the praise
and for the tutorial, yes I will once I sort everything out.

Edited by Vapula!, 31 March 2005 - 07:34 PM.

make an tutorial dude;-)

I wrote this in MEMW but I post it again here to get more ideas from people.

I've been fixing small problems for toggle FellBeast.
Now the problems that I have are as follows.
I wanna know whether you guys can allow/compromise these problems or not.

Prob. 1. Nazgul gets full health each time he mounts/unmounts fellbeast.
I can't do anything for this practically because basically what the toggle does is it kills on-foot Nazgul first and spawns a Fell Beast as a separete unit, so the amount of his health won't be taken over.

Prob. 2. Nazgul can mount/unmount fellbeast whenever you want him to do so.
This is actually a serious problem because of Prob. 1. You can recover his health whenever you want! I can't give it a loading time because when Nazgul mounts/unmounts fellbeast it becomes a different unit (as I wrote in Prob. 1.), so timer gets reset. I might be able to give it StartsPaused = Yes and unpause it by some sort of events, e.g. timer will be the most preferable event for this but I don't think it is possible...

Prob. 3. Nazgul cannot grow.
Since I used activebody for my Nazgul, once he dies his experience will be gone. Well then how does he respawn? I created a fake respawnbody feature with egg object and OCL, which was the most tricky part for making this toggle. So I was originally trying to make him spawn with rank 5, and give him mount fellbeast ability when he reaches rank 10 but now it's totally impossible. What I can do alternatively is to make a new spell for the mordorspellbook. It will be entitled as "FellBeast" and once you get certain amounts of CP and purchase the spell, Nazgul and WitchKing will be able to mount/unmount fellbeast.
OR, I can simply give them mounting fellbeast ability from the beginning.

To #11
I will once I finish it :x

Edited by Vapula!, 01 April 2005 - 04:18 AM.

does it get spawn as a new unit from the citadel?

To #13
lol nope

okay great.. cos that would have been annoying ´

i saw on your website this one also allows the nazguls to toggle on horse, how's the animation for that?

Edited by Micks, 02 April 2005 - 07:54 AM.

Adding a cooldown to the toggle ability would be decent--or you can simply treat the Nazgul+Felbeast combo as a limited power such as the other time-limited boost powers.

IE, instead of necessarily trying to make it fixed within the game's code--which it seems like even the original developers had some problems doing, or just got lazy--turn it into a balanced game effect somehow. A free health bar wouldn't be so bad if you linked it to a 10 point ability in Mordor's spellset. I personally just have the nazgul as summonable allies instead of hero units because they're so problematic.

Since the witch king and Nazgul can't really die via normal means persay, making them just flat-out invincible would be fine if they're on a time-limited summon like the Balrog. Balrog's got health and Gandalf can beat him down quite a bit, but he is generally not at that great of a risk of dying. Same with the Oathbreakers. Do what I did and dump Mordor's Balrog summon and replace it with a "Summon Dark Riders" ability and then nobody will really care if or if not they're able to die.

If you're worried about game abuse, drop the damage signficantly enough that they can liquidate a bunch of units but not completely wipe a player. The Balrog and Army of Dead are already pretty insane, I doubt your invincible Nazgul would be much worse.

Since the witch king and Nazgul can't really die via normal means persay, making them just flat-out invincible would be fine if they're on a time-limited summon like the Balrog.  Balrog's got health and Gandalf can beat him down quite a bit, but he is generally not at that great of a risk of dying.  Same with the Oathbreakers.  Do what I did and dump Mordor's Balrog summon and replace it with a "Summon Dark Riders" ability and then nobody will really care if or if not they're able to die.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

it's an idea but it leaves Mordor with absolutely no heroes which will make them much weaker compared to the others

Not necessarily. Mordor's "heroes" are already fairly clunky, since they start at level 10. They're really not heroes at all. The two Nazgul are just units--they have one ability and one attack. Nothing heroish about them at all. Heck, my Wargs have more "Heroic" sorts of attributes than that! Speaking of which, might be interesting to make a Warg Hero... not that there were any...

The Witch-King is an upped Nazgul with one passive power and one ability--which makes him about as good as a Nazgul and a Drummer Troll combined.

If you really want to make a Hero unit, get a hobbit to be buildable by Mordor and then reskin him to look like Gollum.

Then set your new Gollum's levelup so that he takes forever to reach level 10.

Then give him a level 10 "Find the Ring" ability that uses Word of Power on himself--killing himself permanently and spawning Sauron in his place.

You could even have his "Find the Ring" ability an aggressive spawn Sam and Frodo, and once you kill them THEN Sauron spawns.

ehmm.. how about just adding that feature to gollum? Personally i wouldn't like your ideas, i like the nazguls and they're heroes, they're the heroes of mordor wether you like their abilities or not

I'm just saying that they have very little that requires them to be hero units as such. Since there were definately more than just three Nazgul present at the final battle at the Black Gates, you could concievably make MORE of them available for purchase. But since they have no real abilities, they don't require the micromanagement a hero does, nor do they level up--you can just make them and throw them into battle like any other unit. Aragorn, for example, starts at level 5 while Legolas starts at 1. That still allows some time for the hero to level up and requires you to babysit them to some small degree. The Nazgul don't, so if you made twice as many of them available at half the power and half the cost, you'd get the same effect with a slightly more rich environment.

That's what I mean that they're units and not heroes--they don't level up and have almost no abilities.

If you just want them to just be better though, there's code for switching the Witch-King from felbeast to foot, and you could rewrite a cavalryman to include the mounted-Nazugul model, and then re-skin the horse once you've colored it black--and then you have Dark Riders as well as Felbeasts and a Witch-King on his feet.