Welcome to this guide about Action Commands (from here on called AC's). AC is the name for a new feature for my scenario, in which you use the game's "Find" hotkeys in combination with the "unit selected" condition, to form a button press system, which allows the players to press the buttons for special bonuses, including, but not limited to: Healing, speed boosts and stronger GPs.

There is only one real drawback: The "Find" hotkeys draw the screen so it located the found unit in the middle of the screen. This means you need a looping trigger to keep your hero in the middle, this means that you can only have 1 main hero at a time, you can however have sidekicks following the main hero, and you can have trigger set-ups allowing you to switch heroes.

In this example you need to alter 2 “Find” hotkeys: I suggest you put Find Granary to A and Mining Camp to S (keep in mind that some buildings are called different). I you want to use more hotkeys, I suggest you but the Lumber Camp to D and the Obelisk (see Outpost in the hotkey list) to F. These are just suggestion of course, use any keys that you like.

For what I will show now you need the following triggers in your typetest.xml, just open it with notepad and copy it in. The first one was given to me by Archaeopterix, the second was made by Phoenixx86 and the last was part of Reyk’s new triggers.

<Effect name="QV Modify Protounit">
<Param name="ProtoUnit" dispName="$$22449$$ProtoUnit" varType="protounit">Villager</Param>
<Param name="PlayerID" dispName="$$22301$$Player" VarType="player">0</Param>
<Param name="Field" dispName="$$23943$$Field" varType="pufield">0</Param>
<Param name="Delta" dispName="$$23944$$Delta" varType="string">1.0</Param>
<Command>trModifyProtounit("%ProtoUnit%", %PlayerID%, %Field%, trQuestVarGet("Þlta%"));</Command>
</Effect>
<Effect name="QV Grant Resources">
<Param dispName="$$22301$$Player" name="PlayerID" varType="player">0</Param>
<Param dispName="$$22455$$Resource" name="ResName" varType="resource">food</Param>
<Param VarType="string" dispName="$$23952$$Var Name" name="QVName">QV1</Param>
<Command>trPlayerGrantResources(%PlayerID%, "%ResName%", trQuestVarGet("%QVName%"));</Command>
</Effect>
<Effect name="CAMERA Cut Object (ID)">
<Param name="ScenName" dispName="ID" varType="string">0</Param>
<Command>uiLookAtUnit(%ScenName%);</Command>
</Effect>

Now on to the real triggers, in this example, we will modify a Carnivora:

In the start the carnivora will use it’s special attack (in which it kills a unit instantly) every 150 seconds, but you have to press A and S in turns, and for each correct hit, the time till the recharge drops with 1 second. The bad part is that the Carnivora dies after 30 seconds, meaning it won’t have much time to kill your enemies. These numbers are examples, I suggest you pick lower numbers so you can actually micro your hero to: It is all about finding a balance: These god powers are most likely something special in your scenario, you won’t use them that often, and if they only last 5 seconds, you really kill fun, but if I takes 1 minute, the focus on god powers is to heavy.

Note: the parts in italics are not needed to make everything work, they just add something extra.

Trigger A001 active, run immediately.
Condition:
Always
Effects:
Modify Protounit: Granary –9 LOS
Modify Protounit: Mining Camp –9 LOS
(In case you also have the D and F keys mapped, do this for the Obelisk and Lumber Camp too, this to prevent the player from finding the buildings, so he/she can select them all, it makes them invisible on the minimap).
Change Name: Change the name of the Granary to A, the Mining Camp to S, etc. (This is so it is easier to remember to which building is what hotkey).
Modify Protounit: Audrey (Protoname of the Carnivora): Recharge time +138.0 (since the base time is 12 seconds)
Modify Protounit: Audrey Water: Recharge time +138.0
Set Tech Status: Husbandry: Unobtainable
Set Tech Status: Hunting Dogs: Unobtainable
Set Tech Status: Pickaxe: Unobtainable (this to prevent the player from accidently researching the technologies).
You can also make the buildings have unlimited heatlh, but I suggest you put them in a small corner, where nobody can attack them anyway.

Trigger A002 active, loop.
Condition:
Always
Effect:
Camera Cut Object: Let it focus on your main hero. (Else you will switch to the buildings if you press a hotkey).

Trigger B001 active.
Condition:
God power active: Audrey
Timer: 3 seconds (The timer is needed because else it could fire twice)
Effects:
Counter:Add Timer: 30 seconds (So the player can see how long it takes before the Carnivora dies)
Fire Event: B002
Fire Event: B004
Fire Event: B006

Trigger B002
Condition:
Unit selected: Granary
Effects:
Fire Event: B003
Modify Protounit: Audrey, Recharge time –1.0
Modify Protounit: Audrey Water, Recharge time –1.0
Quest Var Modify: QVname +1 (This will be used later on)

Trigger B003
Condition:
Unit selected: Mining Camp
Effects:
Fire Event: B002
Modify Protounit: Audrey, Recharge time –1.0
Modify Protounit: Audrey Water, Recharge time –1.0
Quest Var Modify: QVname +1

Trigger B004 (this one is to prevent players from selecting both buildings, what some people will do)
Condition:
Unit selected: Granary
Unit selected: Mining Camp
Effects:
Fire Event: B005
Modify Protounit: Audrey –1000 HP
Modify Protounit: Audrey Water –1000 HP (now they don’t have health left, and die)

Trigger B005
Condition:
Always
Effects:
Modify Protounit: Audrey +1000 HP
Modify Protounit: Audrey Water +1000 HP (So the player can cast it again, else they will die right away)

Trigger B006
Condition:
Timer: 30 seconds
Effects:
Disable Trigger: B002
Disable Trigger: B003 (If you don't do this, the player is able to use it to make carnivora stronger before they cast the second one)
Fire Event: B001
Fire Event: B007
Modify Protounit: Audrey –1000 HP
Modify Protounit: Audrey Water –1000 HP (now they don’t have health left, and die)
QV Grant Resources: QVname, Food, to player 3
Send Chat: You had "+trPlayerResourceCount(3,"Food")+" hits on your keyboard. (This is thanks to Phoenixx86)
QV Modify Protounit: Audrey, recharge time, +QVname
QV Modify Protounit: Audrey Water, recharge time, +QVname (This will add the number of hits to the audrey recharge time, resetting it)

Trigger B007
Condition:
Always
Effects:
Modify Protounit: Audrey +1000 HP
Modify Protounit: Audrey Water +1000 HP (So the player can cast it again, else they will die right away)
Grant Resources: -999999999999 Food for player 3 (to reset the keyboard hit counter)
Quest Var Set: QVname == 0 (to reset the hit counter from the QV modify protounit)
Fire Event: B008

Trigger B008 active. (This one is just a fun extra, showing that you got the best possible score).
Condition:
Quest Var Check: QVname >= 150
Effect:
Overlay Text: Perfect!

Hotkey Lock: Sometimes, hotkeys stop working for an unknown reason, you can just open up the hotkey editor and click ok again, I advice you tell that to the player to.

I hope you found this useful, or at least interesting, and that you are now I aware that I am making a scenario (since the main focus of the article is hyping of course). I will post more of these moves containing action commands soon.

Best regards,
Paperfriend

[This message has been edited by Paperfriend (edited 09-22-2006 @ 11:26 AM).]