doubts about expressions in the "map actions"

[juliocpaes]

Dear friends Mapmakers,

what's the difference between type "attack" and "melee "? units in these two modes (team 1) parameterized enemy will attack the team 0 anyway.

could someone translate for me, whats means the words,
"melee" - "Munger"- "Shaman"?
I can not understand idiomatic expressions.

[Zaknafein]

melee, is hand to hand combat, I don't know what it means in scripting. Probably used for units with swords and stuff.

shaman is a map action used for journeymen or other units with healing powers. It could also be used on units that have a special that will target friendly units.

How is the map extraction going?

[A-Red]

The "Melee" action is buggy and not many mapmakers have ever used it. Even Bungie didn't use it much. I suggest that you always use the "Attack" action instead.

Don't try to use "Munger" until you are skilled at all other map actions. Mungers are very complex. As far as I know, the only tutorial that explains them is this one.

[Graydon]

To be specific and answer the question you posed though, the known differences are the following:

-ATTA is designed to work with any and all unit types. MELE is designed to work exclusively with melee units (as Zak explained, hand to hand combat units... basically excluding anything with ranged attacks)
-ATTA has many more specific parameters to make units do special things, such as flags like Attack Nearest, Attack Ground Location, or a Polygon in which the attackers will only attack inside of. The only unique parameter MELE has is a Power over Distance threshold (this will make your MELEing units attack a more powerful unit over a closer one when first targetting, or retargetting after killing its first target)
-MELE has the advantage of being able to specify a formation for the units to attack in, where with an ATTA you can't specify.

With the above in mind, I did a bit of research. The age old rule of "don't use the Melee action" seemed to ring a little foggy in my head so I went and asked Melekor what the deal is. He checked the lines of code relevant to the action and it's had two upgrades over the years:

// Build 225 - ALS - all games should use myth3's version of the code - the other version was clearly a bug (it didn't check bounds properly and produced crashes once target_index became too high and outside Myth's memory)

// Build 358 (1.7.2 beta) - GP ALS: Fixed a crash that could happen as a result of using too many monsters in a melee map action. (The limit is now 126.)


So with those two notes in mind, I'm thinking it's safe to say MELE actions are good to go, regardless of historical information about the action.

And as A-Red said, steer clear of MUNGER.... it's a very complex action and likely won't work for you as you expect, or will break your script and frustrate you. Only real time you need to start employing MUNG actions is when you've reached scripting limits and need to recycle actions you've already written. If that explanation makes no sense, it's a good indication you should stay away from Munging.

[Fury IX]

I think the main problem with the melee action is that the enemy will not retarget units, but will stand still the rest of the game if no one gets close.

Also, having to regroup into formation before attacking put the AI enemy at a huge disadvantage, because you can always out run them (or lead) as they try to regroup constantly.

It does have is uses, but for regular myth style or beginning mapmakers, it is pretty limited.

[juliocpaes]

Dear Friends,

Fury IX »
Graydon
A Red-
Zaknafein


I thank everyone for the explanation. I understood informations.

[juliocpaes]

pardon. I forgot to ask about the action type "rout", what is it?

[Graydon]

Rout makes units run away to the nearest rout waypoint. So for example say you have a defense level where the enemy keeps coming in waves, but when you win you want them to run away in a scattered fray. On the same condition that triggers the endgame Light victory, you can trigger the Rout action, linked to all the enemy units (or just the enemies that would/could be survivors in the last wave) and have a bunch of waypoints along the edge of the map that the enemies came from. They'll all make their way to the closest rout point, making them look like they're randomly running away in different directions.

[juliocpaes]

Gradyom,

thanks,
ahh, ok now I understand.

doubts in "casualties"