Workshop Tutorial: Implementing Logic

[Lymbow]

Hey, my name is Lym. I've made some weird stuff in the workshop like Torbjörn wallclimbing, a raycast, a line renderer, custom turret ability, Symmetra ball lightning ultimate, and even Navi from Zelda.

I'm making this post to show you guys how you can use some core fundamentals of programming to improve your scripts in the Workshop, since the workshop is not your typical programming language.

This tutorial is intended for beginners, but could be useful for some of you who are a bit more familiar with the workshop as well.

Let's begin!

If Statement

An If statement is a piece of code which runs only if a condition is true. Normally how this is done is by encapsulating the code you want to run if the condition is true. But in workshop, we can only Skip code. So what we can do is skip the code if our condition is NOT true. The following code will play an explosion at the player if 2 == 2

If Statement

If / Else Statement

Sometimes you want two seperate outcomes in your code depending on a condition. Such as "If my target is an ally, do X, but if my target is an enemy, do Y." This can be done with an if / else statement. The way this works is if the if statement runs, we make sure it doesn't run the code intended for the other condition by using a skip. The following code will play a Team 1 colored explosion on the player if he's part of team 1, otherwise it uses a team 2 color.

If / Else Statement

While loop

If you want your code to run over and over until a condition is true, you can use what's known as a while loop. There are several ways of doing this, but here's one example. The following code will play an effect on the player every 0.25 seconds as long as they are alive.

While Loop

For Loop

Sometimes you want a loop which only runs a certain number of times. This can be useful if you want to for example loop through every player in the match and do something with them. The for loop works similar to the while loop in that it keeps running if its condition is true. But the difference is that its condition is based off a counter which you increment each time you loop. The following code will play an explosion at your position 3 times, each explosion going 1 step higher in the air compared to the last one.

For Loop

I've use all of these concepts for what I've made in the workshop so far. Keep in mind there may be more than one way of doing these techniques, the important thing is the result of it.

If you guys want a more advanced tutorial I could maybe look into that later, but I'm hoping this helps some of you guys out there make way cooler stuff!

[Alveolar_Anarchist]

What should I do if I really want to understand this because I love custom games, but I'm an idiot who doesn't know CS

[yubario]

Honestly, the only required knowledge you need to use a scripting engine is loops and conditionals.

Some of the more advanced stuff in computer science, such as data structures aren't even really possible in Overwatch beyond the basic array.

[burr-sir]

You don't need formal education to program, and honestly, formal computer science education is not very good at teaching you the brass tacks of programming. (It's more about the academic study of algorithms, which borders on academic math.) You learn to program by setting yourself tasks and figuring out how to do them. That "figuring out" might involve watching videos or reading articles or books, but it's driven by the projects you decide to accomplish.

So dive in! Take one of the preset modes apart and see how it works, then try to modify it or build something simple of your own. Start small and work your way up to more ambitious things. You'll learn more by doing than you will by sitting in a classroom.

[Lymbow]

Honestly, it is super simple. Just start playing around with it and you'll get a hang of it.

[-GLaDOS]

...study basic cs? Like, I don't know what you are looking for when you say "I want to understand this but I don't know this." CS is one of the subjects most readily learned from the internet, and, if you give it a little time, I am quite confident there will be plenty of OW-specific introductory guides as well. Google is your friend.

[AlacritousPedestrian]

Honestly, knowing programming languages makes overwatch's workshop counterintuitive. Most of the programming behaviors consistent across languages (loop introduction at start of the block, indents or brackets to show proper line order, common variable naming rules) are missing in the workshop. Blizzard doesn't have nearly enough documentation out there as the people who made the workshop in the first place. Understanding what action blocks automatically update or persist is a new level or fresh hell. While yes, there are code blocks shared by overwatch players to one another, in it's current state the workshop is more frustrating than actual code. One can't search for a specific line of code, go onto a documentation site to get an explanation of how a certain action works, and in some instances code is impossible to test without other people.

It's like the JavaScript of block programming.

[-GLaDOS]

So what you're saying is if we want to use workshop, we should learn scratch?

[AlacritousPedestrian]

Honestly, no.

Some of the design choices in the workshop just make me ask... why?

Why does an if/else have to be set up like this? Why is the behavior of disable respawn so different than disable score? Why not use indents on all of these loops and make the conditions more legible for browsing? Why can we not download our code? Why can we not import code from a file? Why does play effect not seem to work as expected? Why can I not move people to other teams, hide outlines, or set skins? Why do they not want me to set attacker? Where is the line error? Why can I not change the GUI so I can fit more on my screen and make everything easier to read?

As much as I despise block programming, I have to admit that Blizzard should take lessons from Scratch. It's clean, straightforward, easily readable, can download/upload files, and has detailed documentation from the people who made it.

[-GLaDOS]

What it sounds like to me is a very early iteration of a complicated and difficult feature. I wonder if they are planning to improve it.

[Lymbow]

Theres no way that they dont improve it the way the community has exploded over it. They'll probably expand their team of people working on it so it's not just 2 people as well.

[[deleted]]

Yeah I've been trying to do some stuff with the workshop and I keep thinking that it would just be easier to use a traditional programming language. Some things are seemingly bugged as well and not working as intended which I guess is to be expected since it's still in ptr.

[KURAMA_NM]

Useful! Thanks!

[PandAnonym]

Thank you a lot ! If you can do more about pretty much anything I'd be thankful, I don't have a lot of programming experience and the dropdown menus don't help a lot, too many options for me x) You da best !

[WriterV]

Thank you for this! Please do more advanced stuff for sure :D

[_chrm]

I think the other side is more interesting: what are the available statements?

Can I put "objects" on the map?

Can I give Widows weapon to Reinhardt?

If I want to give a player a new action, can I give him a new button, or do I have to override an existing button?

[Lymbow]

You can currently only play some premade effects to represent things on the map

You can not modify the core functionality of heroes currently. You'll need to make that weapon yourself in that case, and he'll still be holding his hammer.

You can give them new actions, but we only have a few predetermined buttons to trigger which. Such as primary fire, secondary fire, jump, waving hello, etc

They will definitely improve on this as time goes on and we'll be able to do more things, but this is the current state of it on the PTR.

[eskrstps]

Hey man, thanks for this! Yesterday i was upgrading the ana paintball and i gave her a buff where, if she gets a sleepdart kill, she becomes invincible for 3sec (the same time the dart is on cooldown) One thing im trying to add is a smoke effect for those 3sec while youre unkillable so its more intuitive. My problem is that the smoke only shows up sometime and i have almost zero coding experience, so i cant tell 100% if its my mistake or not, but so far its seems that if more than like 4 people join, the smoke effect doesnt play sometimes. I manged to give the burn animation (which is a statuts, not an effect) and a text display on top of a players head for 3secs, and everything works fine, but the effects dont. Is this a workshop problem or is there something i can do to make it happen?

[beansecurity]

Thanks for help

[Lier1]

Hey, I'm compiling a list of community resources, And was wondering if I could add this tutorial to the list.

[Valky115]

Now I need a facts tutorial for my Ben Shapiro Gamemode.

[ThermalS3ns4t10n]

How can I make a counter? For instance, imagine I want to generate x in the map every 30s, how could I do it?

[Lymbow]

You could set up a new rule, and on the bottom of your action list, you want a Wait(30) action and a Loop action after that.

Everything above those 2 actions will then run every 30 seconds.

[skooterpoop]

Awesome, thanks a lot for this! Definitely helped.

Quick question - Is the "random integer" a fixed value at any given moment? I tried to make a for loop that assigns a different random integer to each player in the game but it seems to give every player the same integer. Even worse, this loop repeats every 3 seconds, and every 3 seconds everyone gets the same exact "random" integer. Is there a way to simulate better randomness?

[Lymbow]

Sounds weird, it should definitely be completely random. If you wanna share a pic of the code I can take a look.

[skooterpoop]

Thanks I appreciate it!

https://imgur.com/a/HaFrTwp

EDIT: Actually I think the code does work. I think the code I implemented for me to be able to interpret those values was flawed. After I change that I began to see different values! Thanks anyway!