How to create a fake attack animation during an event?

[blob]

In a campaign I am writing, during a particular event, I want one unit to fake attacking another. With that, I mean that the attack animation should show, the defense or hit animation should show, and the associated sound effects should play. I want to be in control of the number of strokes (just one, actually) and whether the attack hits or misses. There should be no floating numbers or actual changes to the units. Consider something like {FAKE_UNIT_MOVE}, only for an attack animation.

Unfortunately, I could not find a macro or something equivalent in WML.

Now, given that the involved units are of specific unit types and even at specific hex coordinates, I could probably do what I want by hiding the units and building the animation via [item] tags. However, this is not particularly future-proof as the animation frames (file names, paths, numbers) might change between Wesnoth versions, so this might work in one particular version of Wesnoth, but not in the next. Similar thing with the sounds.

So, did I miss something, or do I have to do this the awkward way?

[zookeeper]

[animate_unit]. Look how it's used for example in 'Towards the Caves' in SoF.

[Reepurr]

As far as I'm aware, you also need a {MODIFY_UNIT} to change facing. Maybe I just had lots of problems.

Here's a snippet from my old abandoned campaign, where a unit on 4,5 is attacking a unit with an ID of Gun1, with his axe:

Code: Select all

	{MOVE_UNIT x,y=3,8 4 5}
	{MODIFY_UNIT x,y=4,5 facing ne}
	{MODIFY_UNIT x,y=5,5 facing sw}
[animate_unit]
            flag=attack
            [filter]
                x,y=4,5
            [/filter]
            [filter_second]
                id=Gun1
            [/filter_second]
                [primary_attack]
                    name=axe
                [/primary_attack]
            hits=yes
        [/animate_unit]

[blob]

Not sure how I could miss the [animate_unit] tag when it's right there in the docs. Either way, works a treat. Thank you very much.

[boru]

You can put the facing directly into [animate_unit]

Example:

Spoiler:

Code: Select all

[animate_unit]
         flag=attack
         with_bars=no
         [filter]
                id=Shining
         [/filter]
         [primary_attack]
            name=sword
         [/primary_attack]
         hits=kill
         [facing]
             [filter]
                id=Terro
             [/filter]
         [/facing]
[/animate_unit]